Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis
by hphh
Summary: Harry Potter from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality with more of the original book's characters. Will Harry ever admit how much Hermione means to him? And don't count out Ron's chess skills or Hagrid's hut!
1. Chapter 1

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 1

**Harry Potter, all Harry Potter characters, and the entire Harry Potter Universe is owned by J. K. Rowling.**

**This book builds on fanfictions** _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ **and** _His Own Man._ **This is intentional; all will become clear as the story unfolds.**

––

In the house of Professor Michael Verres-Evans, a bookcase commands every inch of wall space. Each bookcase has six shelves, going almost to the ceiling. Some bookshelves are stacked to the brim with hardback books: science, maths, history, unbound sheaves of recent publications. Other shelves have two layers of paperback science fiction, the back layer propped up on old tissue boxes or lengths of wood, so the books peek out from behind those in front. And it still isn't enough. Books overflow onto the tables and the sofas and make little heaps under the windows.

Professor Michael Verres-Evans, his lovely wife, Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres and their son all adore books. They collect books. They are consumed by books. This Tuesday in July their son, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, stands trying to make himself appear a little taller, running a hand through his hair.

An unstamped envelope of yellowish parchment sits, out of place, on the living-room table. Everybody makes uncomfortable glances at the letter addressed to _Mr. H. Potter _in emerald-green ink. If they could make it disappear by wishing, it would.

The Professor is speaking sharply to his wife. Neither of them shouts of course. The Professor loves Petunia; shouting would be uncivilised.

"You're joking," he said. He looked afraid. He looked like he thought she was serious.

"My sister was a witch," Petunia repeated, her face a little afraid, too. But her voice was steady. "And James was a wizard."

"This is absurd!" Michael said sharply. "They were at our wedding – " He paused, no words coming out. "They visited for Christmas – "

"I told them you weren't to know," Petunia whispered. "But it's true. I've seen things – "

The Professor rolled his eyes, interrupting, "Dear, I understand that you're not familiar with the sceptical literature. You may not realise how easy it is for a trained magician to fake the seemingly impossible. Remember how I taught Harry to bend spoons? If it seemed like they could always guess what you were thinking, that's called cold reading – "

"It wasn't bending spoons – "

"What was it, then?"

Petunia bit her lip. "I can't tell you. You'll think I'm – "

She swallowed. "Listen. Michael. I wasn't ... wasn't – always like this – " She gestured at her waist in a vague way. "Lily did this! Because I – because I _begged _her." It sounded like her voice was breaking, but she pressed on in a rush. "Since I was 14, I begged her. Lily had _always _been prettier than me, and I'd ... been mean to her. I hated that she was prettier. Then she got _magic. C_an you imagine how I felt? And I _begged _her to use some magic on me so I could be pretty too. Even if I couldn't have her magic at least I could be pretty – "

Tears were gathering in Petunia's eyes. "And Lily would tell me no and make up the most _ridiculous_ excuses, like the world would end if she were nice to her sister or a centaur told her not to – just the most ridiculous things. I hated her for it! When I graduated from university I was going out with this boy, Vernon Dursley. He was the only one who would talk to me – " Now her voice really did break. She took a deep, wavering breath.

"He wanted his first son to be named Dudley. It was too much! _What kind of parents name their child Dudley Dursley?!_ One morning it all just hit me and I was sick in the sink.I quit my job and went to visit my sister. We had a long talk – "

Petunia stopped.

"Anyway," she said, her voice small, "she gave in. She told me it was dangerous. I said I didn't care any more. She gave me this awful stuff to drink and I was sick for weeks, but when I could get out of bed my skin cleared up and I finally filled out and ... people started to be _nice _to me!"

Now she spoke with a bitterness Harry had never heard before, gesturing angrily at the world in general. "I hated them – just everyone! – for a while. But I couldn't hate Lily any more. Oh, we would fight – "

"Darling," Michael's gentle voice chided, "you got sick, you gained some weight while resting in bed, then outside all summer did wonders for your skin. Or being sick made you change your diet – "

"She was a witch." she insisted, a little mollified. "I saw it."

"Petunia," the annoyance crept back. "You _know_ that can't be true. Do I really have to explain why?"

She wrung her hands, desperate. "My love, I know I can't win arguments with you, but please! You have to trust me on this."

"_Dad! Mum!_"

The two of them stopped and looked at Harry as though they'd forgotten anyone else was in the room.

Harry took a deep breath. "Mum, _your_ parents didn't have magic, did they?"

"No." Petunia said, looking puzzled.

"Then no one in your family knew about magic when Lily got her letter. How did _they_ get convinced?"

"Ah, they ... " Petunia said. "They didn't just send a letter. They sent a professor from Hogwarts. He – " Her eyes flicked to Michael. "He showed Lily a magical demonstration."

"Then you don't have to fight over this." Harry said firmly, hoping against hope that _just this once, they'll listen to me_. "We can just get a Hogwarts professor here and Dad can decide an experiment."

He pondered it, then brightened. "Mum, you don't have to admit that it's false until after the experiment. That's what the experimental method is for, so that we don't have to just argue."

The Professor looked down at him, dismissive. "Oh, come now, Harry. Really, _magic?_ I thought _you'd_ know better than to take this seriously, even if you're only 10. Magic is just about the most unscientific thing there is!"

Harry felt the bitterness as his mouth twisted. He was treated well, probably better than most children by their own fathers. He had gone to the best primary schools. When that failed, he was tutored from the endless pool of starving university students. He was always encouraged to study whatever caught his attention, bought all the books that caught his fancy, sponsored in whatever maths or science competitions he entered, given anything reasonable that he wanted, _except, maybe, the slightest shred of respect!_

The Professor was a Doctor teaching biochemistry at Oxford. He could hardly be expected to heed the advice of a little boy. Harry hated it: You would listen to Show Interest, of course; that's what a Good Parent would do, and so, if you conceived of yourself as a Good Parent, you would do it. But take a ten-year-old _seriously?_ Hardly.

Sometimes he wanted to scream.

His mum smiled patronizingly. "Thank you, Harry, for being willing to defend me. But – " she straightened to stare at her husband, "I don't need someone to defend me. I want my husband to, to, just this once, listen to his wife who loves him, and not argue ..."

Harry closed his eyes. _Hopeless. Both of my parents are hopeless._ He opened his eyes. It was turning into one of _those_ arguments where his mum tried to make his dad feel guilty while his dad tried to make his mum feel stupid.

"I'm going to my room." Harry announced. His voice quavered a little. "Please don't fight about this, Mum, Dad. We'll know soon enough, right?"

"Of course, Harry." His dad glanced at him. His mum gave him a reassuring kiss. Then they went on fighting.

He went upstairs, shut the bedroom door and tried to think. Funny thing was, he _should _have agreed with Dad. No one had ever seen any evidence of magic. According to Mum, there was a whole magical world out there. How could anyone keep something like that a _secret_? More magic? That seemed a rather suspicious sort of excuse.

It should have been simple. Mum was joking, lying or insane, in that order. Though she wasn't a practical joker, she could have slipped the letter in with the mail; that would explain how it arrived without a stamp. Harry didn't want to think about the more awful possibilities.

_There has to be an explanation! The universe can't really have magic!_ _Except ..._

He had the strangest sensation as if he already knew magic was real. It had struck the back of his neck the instant he saw the putative letter from the putative Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

He rubbed his forehead, grimacing. _Don't believe everything you think,_ one of his books said.

But now he felt bizarre certainty: he just _expected_ that, yes, a Hogwarts professor would show up, wave a wand and magic would come out. That his mind made no effort to guard against falsification – making no excuses in advance for why there shouldn't be a professor, or the professor should only be able to bend spoons –

_Where do you come from, strange little prediction?_ He challenged himself. _Why do I believe what I believe?_

Usually he could answer that, but today he had no _clue_ what his brain was thinking. He shrugged. _A flat metal plate on a door affords pushing. A handle on a door affords pulling. The thing to do with a testable hypothesis is to go and test it._

He sat at his desk and reread the letter.

––

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE_

_(O. Merlin 1st Class, Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mug., Int'l Confed. of Wizards)_

_Dear Mr. Potter,_

_You have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of books and equipment you are expected to purchase. Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress_

On the reverse was a list of required supplies.

_First-year students will require:_

_Plain work robes (black)_

_Gloves (dragon hide or similar)_

_Winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)_

_The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk_

_A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot_

_Beginning Transfiguration by Emetic Switch_

_Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling_

_Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore_

_Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger_

_The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble_

_Cauldron (pewter, standard size 2) and Basic Potions Set_

_Glass or crystal phials_

_Telescope set_

_Brass scales_

_Wand_

_Students may bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad._

_Please note that clothes should carry name tags._

_PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS._

––

Harry took a piece of lined paper from his desk and began composing his reply:

_Dear Deputy Headmistress_

He paused, thought about it, discarded the paper for another, tapped another millimetre of graphite from his mechanical pencil: _this calls for careful calligraphy,_ he resolved.

_Dear Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall,_

_Or Whomsoever It May Concern:_

_I have your letter of acceptance to Hogwarts, addressed to Mr. H. Potter. Perhaps you should know that my genetic parents, James and Lily Potter, are dead. I was adopted by Lily's sister, Petunia Evans-Verres and Michael Verres-Evans._

_I am extremely interested in attending Hogwarts, conditional on such a place actually existing. My mother says Hogwarts exists, though she can't use magic herself. My father is highly sceptical. I myself am uncertain._

_To wit, where may I obtain any of the books or equipment listed in your letter?_

_Mother mentioned that you sent someone to Lily Potter (née Evans) to assuage her concerns. Perhaps they also helped Lily obtain her books? If you would please arrange a similar visit for me it would resolve many things._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres._

––

Harry added their home address, folded the letter and put it in an envelope. He addressed the envelope, _To: Hogwarts._ Further consideration led him to obtain a candle, a penknife and drip wax onto the flap of the envelope. He shaped his initials in the wax with the penknife: HJPEV.

_If I am going to descend into this madness, I will do so with style!_

Feeling better, he went back downstairs. His father was sitting in the living room reading a book of higher maths – his mother was in the kitchen making ravioli, one of his father's favourite meals. She was 'not arguing.' It didn't look like they were talking to one another at all. As scary as arguments were, 'not arguing' was worse.

"Mum," Harry breached the unnerving silence, "I'm going to test it. According to your theory, how do I send an owl to Hogwarts?"

His mother turned from the kitchen sink, shocked. "I really don't know. I think you use a magic owl."

He should've pounced on that. _Oh, so there's no way to test your theory then!_ But the peculiar certainty at the back of Harry's neck seemed willing to stick itself – with the rest of his hapless neck attached – out a little further.

"Well the letter got here somehow, so I'll just wave it around outside and call 'letter for Hogwarts!' Maybe an owl will pick it up. Dad, want to watch?"

His father shook his head minutely. _Of course,_ Harry realised. _Magic is a disgraceful thing that only stupid people believe in. If Dad were to so much as test the hypothesis, or even watch it being tested, that would be like associating himself with it!_

Clenching his teeth, Harry stumped out the back door into the garden. It occurred to him that if an owl _did_ come snatch the letter, it would be impossible to convince Dad.

_But, but, that can't _really _happen – can it? No matter what my brain seems to believe, if an owl swoops down for this envelope, I'm going to have more important worries than what Dad thinks._

Harry took a deep breath. He raised his right hand with the envelope.

He swallowed.

He had almost called out, "_Letter for Hogwarts!" _while holding an envelope high in the air, in the middle of his back garden. It was ... actually pretty embarrassing!

_No. I'm better than this. I will use the scientific method even if it makes me feel stupid!_

"Letter – " Harry said, but it came out as more of a whispered croak.

Harry steeled his will and shouted at the heavens:

"_Letter for Hogwarts! Can I get an owl?_"

A finch burst out of the bush and took flight.

"Harry?" A bemused woman's voice spoke.

Harry pulled down his hand like it was on fire and hid the envelope behind his back like it was drug money. His whole face burned with shame.

There was Mrs. Figg's face peering over the fence, grizzled gray hair escaping from her hairnet. She lived next door and occasionally babysat Harry.

"What are you doing, Harry?"

"Noth–" Harry said in a strangled voice. "Nothing. I'm testing a really silly theory – "

"Did you get your acceptance letter from Hogwarts?"

Harry froze in place_._

After an eternity, Harry's lips said, "Yes, I got a letter from Hogwarts. They say they want my owl by the 31st of July, but – "

"But you don't _have_ an owl. Poor dear! I can't imagine _what_ someone was thinking, just sending you the standard letter."

Her wrinkled arm stretched out over the fence to open an expectant hand. Not even thinking, Harry gave over his envelope.

"Just leave it to me, dear." she reassured him, "In a jiffy or two I'll have someone over."

Her face disappeared from above the fence.

The silence in the garden stretched on and on and on.

Then Harry's calm voice said, "What?"


	2. Chapter 2

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 2

**All of Harry Potter's hopes, the entire universe Harry Potter dreams of... All is owned by J. K. Rowling.**

––

It was hot the Sunday afternoon Harry met the Deputy Headmistress. It was uncomfortable outside, so Harry was inside.

His mother had gone to answer a knock at the door. She sounded pleased but Harry wasn't really paying attention. He had just started an interesting new article his dad gave him when she came back in the room.

"Harry, I'd like to introduce you to someone."

The woman who followed her looked quite witchy in her black robes and pointed hat, but when she spoke she sounded formal. She sounded Scottish. It didn't go together with the look at all. His first impression was that she would cackle and stir a bubbling cauldron, but the whole effect of her square glasses, long black robe and grey hair was ruined as soon as she opened her mouth.

"Hello, Mr. Potter. I am Professor Minerva McGonagall. You sent me a letter?"

"Hello, Deputy Headmistress."

"Just Professor will do." Professor McGonagall replied, eyes briefly going to the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. "What a lovely home you have!" she said to his mum.

"Thank you, you are too kind." Petunia smiled in a way she hoped was welcoming. "We keep buying more books but we ran out of places to keep them. Will you sit?"

"May I ask Harry a few questions first?" She gestured at Harry.

"Of course! Of course! He's such a bright boy." His mum beamed at him, which irritated Harry. He liked her smile, just not when she pigeonholed him.

"Wonderful!" She turned to him. "Harry, I am delighted to meet you at last! Do you know anything about Hogwarts?" Professor McGonagall's eyes seemed to sparkle with curiosity.

"The school? Nothing, really. Does it offer graduate courses? What kind of computer should I bring?"

Professor McGonagall's laugh was more nervous than he expected. His questions apparently had her off-balance. "Muggle – er, Muggle means 'non-magical' – Muggle computers utterly fail in the presence of magic." She straightened. "Hogwarts is the best magical school in the world. We take great pride in our educational curriculum. If you bring the items listed on your letter, you will do very well."

"Can you do magic?" He asked. "I mean, how do I ask this? If magic causes computers to break, does Dad's Mac – " he gestured at the computer in the corner. " – stop you from being able to do magic in this room?"

"That was something I meant to discuss with you. Mrs. Figg sent me your letter, so I suppose we shall proceed directly to the demonstration. What shall I do first?"

"Well, we've never seen any magic at all. What kinds of things can you do? Er, my mum has seen magic, but it was a long time ago. Is magic dangerous?"

"Magic can be deadly." Professor McGonagall gave Harry a stern look.

_In trouble already? Just for asking a question?_ He felt some fear.

"But I assure you that everyone in this room is perfectly safe today. New students such as yourself are often curious and I am quite pleased to give you a _safe_ demonstration." The Headmistress' smile put his fears to rest.

"Harry, please be polite to our visitor! She is not obliged to you!" Mum scolded.

"It's quite alright, Mrs. Evans-Verres. I am used to, ah, all kinds of questions in situations such as this." Professor McGonagall glanced up at the ceiling. "I often introduce Hogwarts to families who have never heard of it before. Hogwarts has been teaching students since – "

"Forgive me, Professor." Harry interrupted, "Can you turn this book into gold?" He knew some of the earliest scientific studies of chemistry, "alchemy," and it seemed appropriate given the witch's clothing. _Besides, if magic can produce gold from paper, think of the implications!_

"_Most certainly not_, Mr. Potter." Professor McGonagall's face was stern again. But then she smiled. "I could, however, levitate something."

Harry tried to hide his disappointment. _She sounds like a fraud already. What is something to really put it to the test?_ "Could you levitate ... my dad?"

"I suppose, if your father does not object?" The Headmistress looked to his dad.

"I can't think of why not ..." Professor Michael Verres-Evans seemed to be having trouble swallowing.

Harry turned to his dad. "Then let's get this straight. If the Deputy Headmistress can levitate you, Dad, that's going to be it." He failed to suppress a grin – _Dad is really listening to me!_ "You're not going to turn around afterward and say it was a magician's trick. That wouldn't be fair play. If you feel that way, you should say it _now_ so we can figure out a different experiment instead."

Michael, trying very hard not to say what he was thinking, just rolled his eyes. "Yes, Harry."

(Petunia had cornered him and he had conceded some things: specifically Harry could make his own choice about Hogwarts. But he had not agreed to being levitated!)

"Now Mum, your theory says that the professor can do this. So ... if it _doesn't work_, will you admit you're mistaken? Nothing about how magic doesn't work on sceptics or anything like that?"

Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall was watching Harry with an indecipherable expression.

Petunia smiled. "Yes, Harry. I promise."

The Headmistress seemed to pick up on something of the intensity in the room. She leapt in as soon as there was a pause. "Is that sufficient, Mr. Potter? May I proceed?"

"_Sufficient? _Probably not. But at least it will _help._ Please go ahead, Professor."

She said, "_Wingardium Leviosa_."

Harry looked at his father.

"Huh," Harry said.

His father looked at him. "Huh!" he echoed, the annoyance gone as he gently floated a foot off the rug.

Then Professor Verres-Evans looked back at Professor McGonagall. "All right, can you put me down?"

She obliged him, moving her wand a mere fraction of an inch.

Harry ruffled a hand from the back of his neck up through his hair. Maybe it was just that part of him that had _already_ believed, but ...

"That's an anticlimax. You'd think there'd be a more dramatic mental event associated with updating on an observation of infinitesimal probability – " He stopped himself. Mum, the witch, even Dad was giving him _that look_ again. "I mean, with finding out that everything I believe is false."

_Seriously, it should be more dramatic. Right now my brain should be flushing its entire concept of the universe, since this shouldn't have been allowed. But instead my brain just says, All right, I saw the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts wave her wand and Dad rose into the air. Now what?_

The witch-lady smiled as though enjoying a private joke. "Would you like a further demonstration, Mr. Potter?"

"You don't have to. We've performed a definitive experiment. But ..." He hesitated. He couldn't help himself. Actually, under the circumstances, he _shouldn't_ help himself. It was right and proper to be curious. "What else _can_ you do?"

Professor McGonagall turned into a cat.

He scrambled back in shock, backpedaling so fast that he tripped over a stray stack of books and landed hard on his bottom with a _thwack. _His hands flew back to catch himself. There was a warning twinge in his shoulder as his weight came down unbraced.

At once the small tabby cat morphed back up into a robed woman. "I'm sorry, Mr. Potter." The witch sounded sincere, though the corners of her lips twitched upwards. "I should have warned you."

Harry's breath came in short gasps. His voice came out choked. _"You can't DO that!"_

"It's only a Transfiguration," she placated. "An Animagus transformation, to be exact."

"You turned into a cat! A human mind can't just visualise a cat's entire anatomy and, and biochemistry and what about the _neurology?_ How can you go on _thinking_ using a cat-sized brain to _change back_?" His voice was getting smaller and smaller.

Professor McGonagall was openly smiling now, but her voice was steady.

"Magic."

"Magic _isn't enough_ to do that! How long were you preparing that? Or have you always been a cat?!" The questions completely escaped him.

She blinked. "I think you will understand it better in a few months. Though I am starting to suspect you will finish your _Beginning Transfiguration_ textbook rather sooner than that."

"It isn't something one textbook, much less a bookshelf could contain! How can I explain this? A cat is complicated!" His voice now bordered on rudeness, it had grown so loud.

Entirely forgotten was the strange belief he had in magic _before_ he saw all this.

"Thank you, Mr. Potter," Her eyes shone with suppressed amusement. However she went on crisply. "If you wish to learn more of magic, I suggest that we finalise your forms so that you can go to Hogwarts."

"Yes, of course." he mumbled. "Can you tell me how to get my textbooks?"

She shook her head. "They are sold in Diagon Alley. Does this mean you accept Hogwarts' offer?"

"Hold on a moment, Harry." Dad said. "Remember why you haven't been going to school up until now? What about your condition?"

Professor McGonagall spun to face Michael surprisingly fast for a woman her age. "His condition? What's this?"

"I don't sleep right," Harry exposited. He waved his hands helplessly. "My sleep cycle is 26 hours long. I can't fall asleep until two hours later every day. The next day I go to sleep two hours later than _that. _10, Midnight, 2AM, 4AM, until it goes all the way around the clock. If I wake up early, it makes no difference and I'm a wreck the whole day. That's why I haven't been going to a normal school."

"One of the reasons," Mum interjected. He shot her a glare.

Professor McGonagall gave a long _hmmmmm._"I can't recall hearing about such a condition before ... I'll check with Madam Pomfrey to see if she knows any remedies."

Then her face brightened. "No, I'm sure this won't be a problem – I'll find a solution in time. Now," her gaze sharpened again, "what are these _other _reasons?"

He frowned. "I am a conscientious objector to child conscription, on grounds that I should not have to suffer for a disintegrating school system's failure to provide teachers or study materials of even minimally adequate quality."

Both his parents howled with laughter. "Oh," Dad chuckled, "is _that_ why you bit a maths teacher in third year?"

"_She didn't know what a logarithm was!_"

"Of course," chortled Mum. "Biting her was a very mature response."

Dad nodded. "A well-considered policy for addressing the problem of teachers who don't understand logarithms."

"I was _7 years old!_ How long are you going to keep on bringing that up?"

"I know!" Mum clutched her sides, "You bite _one _maths teacher and they never let you forget it, do they?"

He turned to the Professor. "There! You see what I have to deal with?"

"Excuse me," was all Petunia could get out before she fled through the back door. Her screams of laughter floated in through the french doors.

"There, ah, there." Professor McGonagall seemed to be having trouble speaking for some reason, "There is to be no biting of teachers at Hogwarts. Is that quite clear, Mr. Potter?"

He scowled at her. "Fine, I won't bite anyone who doesn't bite me first."

"Or that time Harry brought a sequencer to class. Barely avoided expulsion..." The mildest lilt of amusement snuck into Dad's tone.

Harry blew up. "Dad! You promised to never tell that if I left off experimenting with DNA until I was grown! I never even got to use it!"

Professor Michael Verres-Evans also had to leave the room then.

"Well." Professor McGonagall seemed suddenly at a loss. A long pause followed while she waited for Harry's parents to compose themselves and reenter the room.

"Well," she offered, "May I presume you accept and would like to attend Hogwarts?"

But she didn't look at Harry, she looked at his mother. Harry thought he understood what passed between them.

Professor McGonagall nodded.

"I think, given the circumstances, that I shall see to the purchase of your school supplies myself." She was addressing Harry squarely. "Would you accompany me a day or two before school begins on September 1st to get your things?"

"What? Why? The other children already know magic, don't they? I have to start catching up right away!"

"Rest assured, Mr. Potter, Hogwarts is quite capable of teaching the basics. I suspect, if I leave you alone for _two months_ with your textbooks, even sans wand, I will return to find a large crater billowing purple smoke, surrounded by a _depopulated_ city and a plague of flaming zebras terrorising what remains of our beautiful England."

Harry's mother and father nodded in perfect unison.

"_Mum! Dad!_"

And with that Professor McGonagall walked out the door.

––

Minerva McGonagall stood outside the Verres home, close to tears. _To think what his life has been like! I have wondered about him for 11 years but somehow Dumbledore never allowed me to peek in on him._

She set out at a resolute pace.

––

It took until after dinner for Professor Verres-Evans to come up with something to say.

"That has to be the very strangest thing I've ever seen!" He and Harry were cleaning up in the kitchen.

"What was strange?" Harry wondered.

"A witch, black hat and all, turned into a cat! And your eyes grew to twice their normal size!" He let out a snicker.

"Dad! It doesn't even follow from conservation of energy. Why does everyone pick on me?"

"Oh, indeed, indeed! I think that's a new record. She just met you and she already accused you of setting zebras on fire!"

––

The next day Harry came up with a better question. "Where did the force push on you, when she levitated you?"

Part of him hoped his dad would declare it all a mass delusion or something.

"It was uniform – very soft. Maybe we need more data. I'd like to try that again!"

"I thought you didn't like magic!" Harry furrowed his brow in confusion.

––

"Mum, tell me something about Lily?"

"We were friends, at the end. Maybe ... Maybe I still resented her a little bit. She changed when she went away to school." Petunia gazed far off into the distance.

Michael was in the other room looking at the Hogwarts letter for what must have been the eleventh time. "WHAT KIND OF A NAME IS DUMBLEDORE?! I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!"

Petunia actually burst out in merry laughter when she heard him. She walked into the room, patted him and kissed him on the cheek.

Harry's brain was starting to comprehend what was broken. The whole idea of a unified universe with mathematically regular laws – the whole notion of _physics _– 3,000 years of resolving big complicated things into smaller pieces, discovering that the music of the planets was the same tune as a falling apple, finding that the true laws were perfectly universal with no exceptions anywhere, laws in the form of simple maths governing the smallest parts – _not to mention _the mind was the brain and the brain was made of neurons. A brain was what a person _was –_

A woman turned into a cat and _that was that_. It was all flushed down the toilet.

He pulled his thoughts back from the brink with an effort.

_The March of Reason will just have to start over. There's the experimental method and that's the critical bit._


	3. Chapter 3

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 3

**Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. Hermione Granger belongs to J.K. Rowling. Ad infinitum.**

––

"Merlin's ears!" The barman peered at Harry. "Is this – can this be – ?"

Harry grimaced. _Adults. Why do they always talk down to me? __Does he think I know who he's talking about?_ Filled with anger, he turned the tables on the old man.

"Am I – ? You never know. If I'm __not,__ the question is, __who?__"

"Bless my soul," quavered the old man. "Harry Potter ... an honour, sir!"

Harry blinked, at a loss. "Well, yes, you're quite perceptive." _He knows my name?_ "Most people don't realise it that quickly – "

"That's enough," Professor McGonagall interrupted. She put a reassuring hand on Harry's shoulder. "Don't pester the boy, Tom. He's new to all this."

"But it is him?" An old woman called from across the room. "It's Harry Potter?" She began toddering closer.

"Doris – " McGonagall ground out. She glared. It should have been enough to intimidate anyone in the small bar.

"I only want to shake his hand." Doris whispered. She peered at the scar on his forehead. Harry, confused, shook her extended hand.

Doris teared up. "My gran'son was an Auror." She whispered to him. "Died in '79. Thank you, Harry Potter. Thank heavens for you."

"You're welcome." Harry said in a flat voice. He carefully turned so she couldn't see him shoot Professor McGonagall a frightened, pleading look.

Professor McGonagall slammed her foot down just as the general rush was about to start. It made a noise that gave Harry a new referent for the phrase "Crack of Doom." Everyone froze in place.

"We're in a hurry." Professor McGonagall's voice was perfectly, utterly normal.

They passed out the bar's back door without any trouble.

_If I thought finding the Leaky Cauldron using that written sheet of instructions was hard, I have a lot to learn about magic. The inside of the magical world is worse than the outside!_

"Professor?" Harry asked in the tiny courtyard behind the Leaky Cauldron. "What was that?"

Professor McGonagall glanced at him in an odd way. "Mr. Potter, do you know? ... how _much_ exactly have you been told about ... how your parents died?"

Harry returned a steady look. "My parents are alive and well, thanks. They always refused to talk about how my _genetic_ parents died from which I infer that it wasn't good."

"I admire the loyalty," she spoke in a low voice, "Though it hurts a little to hear you say it like that. Lily and James were friends of mine."

Harry looked away, suddenly ashamed. "I'm sorry," he ducked, "But I _have_ a mom. I have a dad. It seems I'd just make myself unhappy by comparing that to ... something perfect that I built up in my imagination."

"That is quite wise of you." She murmured. "But your _genetic_ parents died very well indeed, protecting you."

_Protecting me?_

For a moment her face became more stern than Harry had ever seen.

"Professor?" Her look filled him with uncertainty.

"I'm sorry. The years pass, but I still feel like it was just yesterday I lost your mother and father."

Out came a lace handkerchief which she touched to the corners of her eyes. Just as he realised it wasn't _sternness_ in her eyes, her mood vanished.

There in the small courtyard of weeds she spun round to tap three times on the rear wall. It hollowed into a hole, dilating, expanding and shivering into a huge archway revealing a long row of shops with signs advertising cauldrons and dragon livers.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley, Harry Potter. Welcome _back_ to the wizarding world."

Harry stared at what little of the "alley" he could see. _Wizard wordplay. Diagonally. Crooked alley. It certainly looks the part!_

"What ... _did_ happen?" He held onto the moment, hoping Professor McGonagall would answer at least a few of his questions.

She sighed. Her wand tapped Harry's forehead. His vision blurred for a moment. "Something of a disguise, so you don't get swarmed for at least five minutes!"

That was how they walked, together, into Diagon Alley.

Harry's return to the wizarding world struck him as very odd. The cobblestone street went completely off his mental map of downtown London. It turned after five shops. It was definitely much longer than should be possible. There were merchants hawking Bounce Boots ("Made with real flubber!") and "Knives +3! Forks +2! Spoons with a +4 bonus!" There were goggles that would turn anything you looked at green and a lineup of comfy armchairs with ejection seats for emergencies.

Harry took in everything, rotating his head until it almost wound itself off his neck. _Someday there will be that one item I need to complete an infinite wish spell – I mustn't miss a single thing!_ As a result, he veered off without a second thought toward the shop with a front of blue bricks trimmed with bronze metal. Professor McGonagall had to step right in front of him to arrest his departure.

"Mr. Potter, where are you going?!"

He blinked, returning from his daze. "Oh! I forgot for a moment I was with you instead of my family." He gestured at the window's fiery letters, _Bigbam's Brilliant Books__:_ "When you pass a bookshop you haven't visited, you have to go in and look around. That's the family rule."

"That is the most Ravenclaw thing I have ever heard."

"What?"

"Nothing. Our first stop is _Gringotts_," she motioned further down the narrow street, "The bank of wizarding Britain. The vault you inherited from your _genetic_ family is there, with the money your _genetic_ parents left you. You'll be needing money for school supplies." She sighed. "I suppose you may also take a certain amount for books." Then a whim struck her. "Wait a trice though, before you buy too many books. Hogwarts' library is quite large and the tower you will most likely occupy has an even broader library. Any book here is probably a duplicate."

He nodded. "Professor, it's a _great _distraction, perhaps the best distraction anyone ever tried on me. But," He scowled as his head kept swivelling, "I haven't forgotten. How did my genetic parents die?"

She sighed. "Your parents – or your mother at any rate – may have been very wise not to tell you."

"You wish me to continue in blissful ignorance? There is a certain flaw with that plan – "

" – when anyone on the street could tell you the story." The witch completed his thought. "Very well." She paused to give it a proper opening. "Some twenty years ago, Magical England was attacked by You-Know-Who ... "

She hesitated once more, her face growing stern. It made Harry nervous, like he had misplaced a book.

"Professor McGonagall, I really don't know!"

"What's that?" She returned from her daze.

_Adults! She's doing it now, just like them!_ "I don't know who!" he insisted.

When she still did not understand, he parrotted her accent (rather poorly). "Magical England was attacked by – " He stopped. The question hung in the air.

"Oh dear, my apologies, Mr. Potter. His name was Voldemort." She flinched briefly. "The Dark Lord Voldemort."

"Voldemort?" Harry whispered. It should have been funny. It wasn't. The name burned with a cold feeling, a ruthlessness, diamond clarity, a hammer of pure titanium descending on an anvil of yielding flesh. A chill crept over Harry just saying his name.

"From the look on your face, I see you understand. In polite company, it is preferred to call him You-Know-Who, or perhaps He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

"That's odd." He wondered at the name's power.

"I should tell you what happened from the very beginning, when he attended Hogwarts. There certainly were events – I wish now that I had taken greater heed."

"Vol-, sorry – You-Know-Who was at Hogwarts?"

"Yes. But I cannot do it proper justice today. Suffice it to say, he became a terrible dark wizard. With his army of Death Eaters and dark creatures, he raged upon our land of Britain. Many wrung their hands during that dark time. Few dared oppose him, though. One by one, those who did were destroyed. Finally, only Albus Dumbledore remained, the one wizard he always feared."

Harry paused in his walk to consider what he had just learned. _The bystander effect__: __Latane and Darley. __I__f you ha__ve__ an epileptic fit in front of one person __s__he __will probably__ help you;__ in front of three, __everyone __will__ hesitate__. __Diffusion of responsibility: everyone hop__e__s__ someone else __will__ go first._

Noticing his hesitation, Professor McGonagall raised one quizzical eyebrow.

"Go on, Professor. I think I need to hear this."

"Then came the night of October 31st, 1981. James, Lily and their infant child, their son, Harry Potter, were hidden in Godric's Hollow. They had fought alongside Dumbledore, thrice earning the wrath of You-Know-Who."

Tears were coming into Harry's eyes. He wiped them away in anger or maybe desperation. _I didn't know those people, not really. __T__hey aren't my parents _now_! __I__t would be pointless to feel sad for them –_

"The Dark Lord came," the Professor whispered. "You should have been hidden, but you were betrayed. First he killed James. Then he killed Lily. Finally, he came to you in your cot."

Harry's breath caught. He struggled with the urge to choke. Then his legs wobbled, too. He sat down and buried his face in his hands, but the witch's voice still hammered at him.

"You-Know-Who tried to kill you with an unblockable curse," her crisp voice uttered with heavy sorrow.

Somehow even knowing he had survived, the thought of Voldemort looming for the kill broke Harry's last resistance. He sobbed noisily, tried to wipe his eyes and sobbed again.

Professor McGonagall placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "That was where it ended. The curse rebounded on him, leaving only the burnt hulk of his body and _that__ scar_ on your forehead. In a moment, the terror was ended and we were free!"

Harry suddenly felt dizzy. He couldn't process the words. "Wait, what?!" He managed.

She elaborated. "You defeated You-Know-Who as a wee baby. No one knows how. Many think your genetic parents must have played a part. Perhaps they used some magic. Perhaps they were just brave. No one knows." She hesitated, unable to discern Harry's reaction. She saw a small boy sitting in the street, head in his arms, but she could not see his face.

Mustering her courage, she finished. "That, Harry Potter, is why people want to see the scar on your forehead and why they want to shake your hand."

Harry looked up, tears still on his cheeks. "I'll – have to think about this," he hiccupped.

_I feel ... __cold__? __Threatened?__ It can't be true! At least some of that story has to be wrong! __I __have__ to read the first-hand accounts. __I __can'__t let my mind or her mind fill in the gaps!_

He stood, wobbled, but managed it. "Um. You can go ahead and call James and Lily my parents if you want. You don't have to say 'genetic parents.' I guess there's no reason I can't have two mothers and two fathers." He sniffed, wiping his face.

Professor McGonagall silently nodded, relieved she had managed to get through telling the story without tearing up herself. _Oh, James! Oh, Lily!_ She mourned.

They walked on in silence for a bit. Harry continued swiveling his head, taking in the shops and shoppers until a snowy white building appeared, looking more ancient than Athens as it towered over the cobblestone square.

When Harry realised Professor McGonagall was making directly for the white building, he stopped walking. He asked, "Why did You-Know-Who try to kill my parents?"

He had to ask. He knew now, a little more, why he felt confused by the story Professor McGonagall was telling. He felt a twinge of anger _(__Steady, Harry! Steady!). They kept the truth from me for so long – so long! – she kept it from me until the last moment she could!_

Professor McGonagall's answer was low and intense. "Oh, Harry! The Dark Lord killed like it was nothing! James and Lily both fought openly against him and he struck them down as though it meant nothing to him. They were two of the best people in the world! Why, indeed!"

Harry tried to throw her off the scent with an unrelated question. "Who was that pale man in the Leaky Cauldron, in the corner? The man with the twitching eye?"

"Hmm?" She had to think back. "That was Professor Quirrell. He'll be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts this year at Hogwarts."

"Did You-Know-Who ever try to kill you?"

"Me?" she breathed. "I couldn't say. I think he never considered me a threat. Now that you mention it, what a fascinating question! It would be much easier to discuss this at Hogwarts – not a place such as this."

_Is she telling the truth?_ Harry wondered._ Would she lie to me? Did she really never think of her own safety? Have I misjudged her?_

Professor McGonagall spoke then from the compassion she felt for this little boy, plunged into a great big world that seemed ready to devour him. "Harry, since that night, I have felt as if the world became intimidating, inscrutable and fraught with peril. I never dreamed I would be the one to tell you about it, or that – ah, Harry! – you would know so little about James and Lily! Please try to understand, for today has been a great shock to me as well!"

Harry's mind ground to a halt. _Of all the __angles she __could use__, __she is taking __me __seriously. __She is __ask__ing __for compassion. She __wants me to treat __her as an equal!_

_W__hy?_

With that they came before a great white building with vast bronze doors. The carven words above glinted in the morning sunlight: _Gringotts Bank._

––

"Goblins," Professor McGonagall grumbled, pointing to the two figures standing outside the bank.

Two goblins in flawless armor stood motionless outside the bronze doors of the gleaming white building. The doors closed behind two wizards who now glided down the steps.

The doors automatically swung open again for the Professor and Harry. But he couldn't quite see inside until his eyes adjusted, which meant he walked blind through the second set of doors, beautifully wrought in silver. He only noticed the inside as he stopped in the short vestibule that opened into the enormous room. It was distinctly larger than it ought to have been from the outside. He felt mildly disoriented by the blatant disregard for Euclidean geometry. The off-white marble floor and gilded furnishings seemed to breathe an air of ancient power.

Professor McGonagall did not stop like Harry did, which left him very little time to take it all in. Harry raced to her side as she approached the goblin seated quite a bit higher than any goblin around him.

"Please, Mr. Potter has come to make a withdrawal."

"Good morning." The goblin's voice was a snarl from somewhere in his chest. "Do you have his key?"

Harry's mind had only had a few seconds to shift gears. The sight of the goblins had sparked his curiosity even more intensely than Diagon Alley. Unfortunately for his questions, this bank run by hobbit-sized creatures with razor-sharp teeth moved so quickly he had to literally run to keep up with the Deputy Headmistress. Professor McGonagall went through a door and was climbing into a tiny metal cart with a goblin named Griphook. He slipped in beside her and the cart immediately took off.

The track twisted and turned, alcoves and arches and massive blank doors passing at an alarming rate. They went down a steep part, as if it were a roller coaster. The track passed through a waterfall, but instead of being soaked the water evaporated almost instantly. The wind blew against his cheek, cool and moist the way a natural cavern would feel, except that these caves were lit with a sourceless glow that cast only a faint shadow.

When they did stop, Griphook hopped out nonchalantly. He slipped a golden key in a metal door that seemed to fit naturally in the side of this ancient cavern, then did something Harry didn't quite see and the door whispered open.

The vault slowly revealed its heaps of gold, silver and bronze coins. Harry didn't even see the back. Even the large quantity of precious coins didn't register; Harry had a thousand questions first.

"Wow! What's this made from?"

Griphook bared his teeth. "Gold galleons and Silver sickles are made of pure metal. Bronze knuts are an alloy – "

Harry attempted to throw Professor McGonagall off the scent again. "Are you a boy goblin or a girl goblin?"

Griphook curled his fingers in wrath. "What kind of a stupid question is that? Does my name sound like a girl to you?"

Professor McGonagall intervened. "Mr. Potter, you have offered Griphook a serious insult. You must show more respect!"

Harry blinked, then bowed to Griphook. "I apologize profusely. I, err – it's a lot to take in. Goblins, I mean."

Griphook gave Harry a long, hard, calculating look. Finally, through bared teeth, he grunted, "Goblin coin is accepted by wizards around the world. Only a fool would question the integrity of Gringotts Bank or the goblin forges that make the coin."

Harry mulled that over. "Can I change Muggle money for goblin coin?"

Griphook only exhaled a half-snarl.

Harry gave McGonagall a pleading look.

The witch sighed. "I don't suppose you would just collect a little money to purchase school supplies?"

He blinked. "What if I need more? Can I have cheques?"

She shook her head. "No, and I do apologize. It is most unlikely you will need more money in your first year. On the other hand," emphasized with a warning finger, "many first-year students with too much spending money learn to their sorrow they are yet inexperienced."

He gaped at her. _Th__at ma__k__e__s__ sense. __Hmmph. __Professor McGonagall __plopped __me __in front of a giant heap of gold coins. __That's __the opening __of__ nine ten__ths__ of my novels – __it's __a test of my character._

"When I'm older, could I bring in a ton of silver and have it made into sickles?"

Griphook's eyes narrowed to slits. Professor McGonagall stammered, "Where – Where in the _world_ would you get a ton of silver, Mr. Potter?"

"Out of the ground!" He lied. "Is goblin coin worth more than the base metal used in it? Do you change the stamp on the coin every hundred years or so? That happens to Muggle money and we all have to go trade in our money for the new stuff."

Griphook seemed to latch onto the thought. He cast Harry an evil grin. "Goblin coin from before the last goblin war is still accepted – many vaults have them. The dragon imprinted on them represents the dragons guarding some of our highest-security vaults."

"Goblins are famous for their dragon-keeping," Professor McGonagall added. She hoped it would placate Griphook while alerting Harry to his danger. "Mr. Potter, you may take twenty galleons for school supplies today. We must be going!"

Harry was ... flabbergasted.

_T__he wizarding economy __appears to be__ completely decoupled from the Muggle economy!_

Muggles traded gold and silver at rates that changed every second. If he could trade with Muggles at a different ratio than the Goblins' seventeen sickles to a galleon, he could drain gold or silver from the wizard economy until Gringotts collapsed! Harry would take a ton of silver to Gringotts. Gringotts would change it to sickles and charge a small fee, say 5%. After changing the sickles to galleons, Harry could melt down the galleons into gold in the Muggle world. Then he could trade it for more silver than he started with.

_I__sn't the Muggle gold to silver ratio somewhere around eighty to one? __I __d__o__n't think it's seventeen, anyway. And the silver coins __look __smaller__ than the gold coins._

Then again, Harry was standing in a bank that _literally_ stored your money in vaults full of gold coins guarded by dragons. You had to physically take coins out whenever you wanted to spend money. _A__rbitraging market inefficiencies __might be new __to wizards__, b__ut the sad thing is, their way is probably better._

_Still, __if I __were __inclined I __could probably own the whole wizarding world __i__f __I__ could start a bank__._

Letting nothing show on his face, Harry stood silently before giant heaps of gold coins. He stumped forward to pick up handful after handful of gold with one hand, then dump it into the other.

When he had 20 Professor McGonagall coughed. "That's enough, Mr. Potter."

"Hm?" Still focused on his counting, he continued to pick up coins. "Oh. This is a way of quickly figuring out how much gold is in my vault."

"_Mr. Potter!_" Professor McGonagall showed only mild alarm on her face, but Harry suspected her test of his character – well, he may have failed.

"I learned Enrico Fermi's way to accurately count big numbers in your head in school ... "

_Gold is, what, 10,000 pounds sterling a kilo? Then a galleon is worth about 50 pounds ... These mounds of gold coins look about 60 high and 20 wide. A mound is roughly a pyramid or around one-third of the cube –_

Harry did some mental arithmetic.

_That's__ 8,000 __g__alleons __a__ mound__. __Five__ mounds __and change __makes __40,000 __g__alleons__ – __two__ million pounds sterling._

_Well t__hat's the __last__ time I ever mow a lawn for one lousy pound._

He wheeled from the giant heap of money. "Pardon me, Professor, but if my parents died in their 20's, is this a _usual_ amount of money for a young couple to have?"

_If it is, a cup of tea will cost five thousand pounds. Rule one of economics: You can't eat money._

Professor McGonagall shook her head. "Your father was the last heir of an old family, Mr. Potter. It's also possible ... " The witch hesitated. "Some of this money may be from bounties placed on You-Know-Who, payable to his kil–, ah, to whoever might defeat him. Those bounties might not have been collected yet. I am not sure."

"Interesting ... " Harry murmured. "that some of this might have been earned by me, sort of. Possibly. Even if I don't remember the occasion." His fingers tapped against his trouser leg. "I'll feel less guilty about spending _a very tiny fraction of it! Don't panic, Professor McGonagall!_"

"Mr. Potter! You are a minor, and as such, you will only be allowed to make _reasonable_ withdrawals from your vault – "

"I am _all about_ reasonable! I am totally on board with fiscal prudence and impulse control! I wanted to get some _sensible, grown-up _purchases ... "

"Such as?" The Deputy Headmistress eyed him, nostrils flaring.

He adopted his most winsome look. "Trunks whose insides hold more than their outsides?" He had wanted both a trunk and pouch the instant he saw them, but they were obviously very, very expensive from the quality of the stores' fronts.

Her face grew cold. "Those are _very_ expensive, Mr. Potter!"

"Just as I feared," he muttered. "I'm sure, when I'm an adult, I'll want one. I _c__ould_ afford one now. Why not get the use of it right away?"

The witch's gaze didn't waver.

"It's the same money! I mean, I _would _want a good one, with _lots_ of room inside, good enough that I wouldn't have to just get a better one later ... How much does a really nice trunk cost?" He trailed off, her eyes were that dangerous.

_I am definitely taking control of my vaults, as soon as possible. None of this 'you are a minor' business!_

Her frosty reply was filled with suspicion. "What would you _keep_ in a trunk like that, Mr. Potter?"

"Books!"

A long slow sigh escaped her lips. She seemed to deflate. "Of course."

"Imagine if you told me earlier that I could get a magical trunk!" He bubbled with excitement.

Then he frowned. "Dad and I will have to spend the time I have left frantically hitting up all the secondhand bookshops for old textbooks to assemble a decent science library for me. Oh, maybe a small science fiction collection too –"

"You could be forgetting, Mr. Potter, that when I last met your parents, we completely agreed about a certain _herd of flaming zebras_. Hence, it is only today you are hearing about these magical items." The witch's mouth quirked upward.

Harry remembered, but the thought of his home library only made the urge for books stronger.

"Fine. Here's an idea: I'll make the deal a little sweeter for you, okay? Just let me buy – "

"_Mr. Potter! _You think you can _bribe _me?"

Griphook openly grinned at Harry.

"What? _No! _Not like that! I'm saying, Hogwarts can keep some of the books I bring, if you think that any of them would make good additions to the library. _I_ just want to have them around somewhere or other. It's okay to bribe people with _books, _right? That's a – "

"Family tradition." Her tone was one of complete defeat.

"Yes, exactly."

Professor McGonagall glanced upward in a silent plea for strength. "I cannot deny, you speak good sense. I will allow you to withdraw an additional 100 galleons, Mr. Potter." She sighed deeply. "I _know_ that I shall regret this but I am doing it anyway."

"That's the spirit! Maybe I can pay my parents back for all the tutors."

Harry paused to pitch his next request just right. "Does a 'mokeskin pouch' do what I think it does?"

"It can't do as much as a trunk." The Professor's teeth gritted. "But a mokeskin pouch with a Retrieval Charm and Undetectable Extension Charm can hold a number of items until they are called forth by the one who emplaced them."

"Great! I could carry the top three books I was reading on me at all times to just pull one out anywhere! I'll never have to waste another minute of my life! What do you say, Professor McGonagall? It's for the sake of children's reading, the best of all possible causes."

" ... I suppose you may add another 10 galleons."

Griphook was favouring Harry with a gaze of frank respect, possibly outright admiration.

"And a little spending money, please?" This was his most genuine plea. "I think I can remember seeing one or two other things I might want to store in that pouch."

"_Don't push it,_ Mr. Potter. If you need funds or supplies, I am sure we can arrange to get them."

_Like when Dad promised to teach me statistical modeling?_ But Harry restrained himself because she was not Dad. _Or when Mum left for France and forgot her camera, after I had __nagged__ her __about it __half __a dozen times?_

He brightened. "Professor, why rain on my parade? Surely this is a _happy_ day when I discover all things wizarding for the first time! Why act the part of the grumpy grown-up when instead you could smile and remember your own innocent childhood, watching the look of delight on my young face as I buy a few toys using an insignificant fraction of the wealth that I _earned_ by defeating the most terrible wizard Britain has ever known, not that I'm accusing you of being ungrateful or anything, but still, what are a few toys compared to that?"

"_You,_" growled Professor McGonagall. There was such a stern look on her face that Harry squeaked, fell back and knocked over a pile of gold coins with a great jingling noise.

Griphook sighed, putting a palm over his face.

"I would be doing a great service to wizarding Britain if I locked you in this vault and left you here."

She began getting back in the cart that had brought them to the vault; Harry hurried to join her.

––

On the ride up, Professor McGonagall kept muttering about Ravenclaw and a hat. Harry thought he caught her casting dark looks at him as well. Back in the beautiful entrance hall, Griphook leapt out of the cart, cat-like. He turned to address Harry:

"Harry Potter, if you have knowledge of silver, Gringotts requests you tell us where so we can investigate. Counterfeiters and smugglers be cursed!"

Harry stared at him. Griphook's arm was now raised before his chest in silent salute. His eyes shone like glittering ice daggers.

"Oh, dear." The Professor half-smiled. "Dearest Griphook, I, too, shall be keeping a very sharp eye on young Mr. Potter here. You will continue to alert Hogwarts of all activity on his accounts?"

Professor McGonagall avoided Harry's eyes.

"What?!" Harry shouted. "This is my vault! My vault!"

"Quite to the contrary, Mr. Potter," she said, "Your ignorance of our laws is quite charming to me, at least. But you should know the goblins have many ways of discovering whose hands touched their metals. As a matter of recognised law, the goblin nation is in a permanent state of war with all magical counterfeiters."

She locked eyes with him. "They will not send Aurors, excuse me, magical police. They will send an army with dragons!"

Griphook continued to stare at Harry in silence, his eyes malevolent.

Harry remembered something about the virtue of meekness and said nothing. _But his thoughts were racing: __I __need to learn a lot more about __goblins! __For instance, it appears __Gringotts __may __actually ha__ve __the__ teeth to __hold on to __the__ir __little __monopoly__ after all!_


	4. Chapter 4

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 4

**Harry Potter and all his stuff belongs to J.K. Rowling. Minerva McGonagall oversees his vault though.**

––

The Moke Shop the Headmistress chose was a quaint little shop (some might even say cute) mostly hidden by a vegetable stall in an alcove of a magical glove shop on an alleyway off a side street of Diagon Alley. Harry was disappointed: the shopkeeper was not a wizened ancient crone, just a nervous young woman wearing pastel yellow robes.

Right now she was holding a Moke Super Pouch QX31. "It has a Widening Lip as well as an Undetectable Extension Charm. You can put things in it bigger than the mouth, though there is a limit on how much it can hold."

Harry had _insisted_ on coming here straight away, first thing. All the gold he shoved into his pocket when he fell into a pile in his vault bothered his conscience. It bothered him so much he couldn't focus on the saleswitch's explanation. It also made him desperate to get the contraband into the pouch.

_I'm going to get in so much trouble for this!_

_Seriously, though, liquidity is pretty much a requirement if I'm to do a proper job investigating the wizarding world._

Harry had carried the bag of 130 legitimate galleons next to his trouser pocket so any jingling would seem to come from the right place. But the concentration it required was only making things worse.

Blinking rapidly, he asked a question, interrupting the saleswitch. "Can I retrieve things without using words?"

The young woman shrugged. "I think so. I've never been much for wordless magic myself."

"What if I put my pouch into a hidden drawer in a trunk? Will it work?"

She shrugged, "Yes, that's fine. But the trunk won't go into the pouch, even though the pouch could hold something trunk-sized. There's a series of enchantments, see? Pouch enchantments can't contain the stronger magic of the trunk – large magical creatures as well."

His conscience twinged and he lost his train of thought.

_I'm going to get caught!_

_How do I get the coins into the Moke Pouch?_

He took a deep, steadying breath. _I didn't steal them__. They're my own coins__._

He waited for a pause in the conversation. "Can I try it for a bit?" He looked at the pouch. "To make sure it works ... reliably?"

Quelling his trembling, he put the bag in the pouch, whispered "bag of gold," and took it back out. Then he did it again.

After the tenth time, Professor McGonagall turned to examine some of the other items in the shop. A little while later the saleswitch looked away. His heart rate began to slow.

Taking another deep breath, he transferred his bag of gold from his right to his left hand. He dropped it into his pouch.

His right hand closed around some stolen coins, reached into the pouch and dropped them. He whispered "bag of gold." Out came the 130 galleon bag.

Then the bag went back into his _left _hand. He dropped it into the pouch. Reaching with his _right _hand into his pocket ...

Professor McGonagall looked back at him once, scaring him. She didn't seem to notice anything, though.

_E__a__s__y, Harry! __Almost done._

It seemed like an eternity, but the job was done in just a few minutes. He guessed there were 40 stolen galleons.

He wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead. "Huh. Well, this one seems to work fine. I'd like to purchase it, please."

For 15 galleons the Moke Super Pouch QX31 was his. As he left, the door formed a hand and waved goodbye to them, extruding its arm deftly around the leafy vegetables.

Unfortunately ...

"Are you _really_ Harry Potter?" whispered the old man, one huge tear sliding down his cheek. "I read in the _Quibbler_ that you didn't _really_ survive the Killing Curse. No one ever heard from you again ... " It seemed that Professor McGonagall's disguise spell was less than perfectly effective against older, experienced wizards.

Laying a hand on Harry's shoulder, the Professor yanked him behind the vegetable stall at the mention of, "Harry Potter?" The old man followed but it looked like no one else had.

Harry considered it. "I've had this scar as long as I remember. But if there's a conspiracy, I could be any anonymous orphan, raised to believe I am Harry Potter. What's your source?"

Professor McGonagall drew her hand over her face in exasperation. "You look just about exactly like your father, James, in his first year at Hogwarts. Furthermore, I can attest on the basis of _personality alone_ that you are related to the Scourge of Gryffindor."

"_She_ could be in on it too." Harry added.

"No," quavered the old man. "She's right. You have your mother's eyes."

"Hmm." Harry frowned. "That's still not primary evidence of my genetic – "

"Enough, Mr. Potter." The Professor glowered at him.

The old man raised up a hand as if to touch Harry, but then let it fall. "I'm just glad that you're alive," he whispered. "Thank you, Harry Potter. Thank you for what you did ... I'll leave you alone now."

He slowly moved away. The Professor gave an exasperated sigh. "That was not kind. I know you're not used to this, Mr. Potter, but people do care about you. Please consider how many years that man has likely been suffering."

Harry looked down at his shoes. "They shouldn't," he said bitterly. "Think so much of me, I mean."

"You saved them from You-Know-Who. How would they not think highly of you?"

Harry looked up at the witch-lady's strict expression beneath her pointed hat. He sighed. "It's – " he began. But she cut him off.

"I thought you wanted your parents to pay you more attention, not less? I sincerely hope you do not exhibit such fickle rudeness at Hogwarts!"

Harry mentally kicked himself. _I'm running on__ adrenalin! The Incident with the __g__alleons __ha__s __imped__ed__ my charisma._

"I'm sorry, Professor."

Professor McGonagall blinked. Then with a kind twinkle in her eye, she reciprocated. "I'm sorry also. Could you explain what just happened? Please?"

"Well ... " he ruminated, "I do have anger management problems, possibly related to my parents ignoring me. Let me think – "

He touched his cheek for a moment. "Suppose you come into the classroom only to see a boy kicking his desk. You think, 'what an angry child!' The boy is thinking of being shoved into a wall on the way to class and shouted at. _Anyone_ would be angry at that, he thinks." He looked up at Professor McGonagall to gauge her reaction.

She nodded. "I think I understand you."

So he plunged in. "The fundamental attribution error is that we think we are seeing straight into the soul of everyone around us. Yet at the same time we think of ourselves mostly in terms of circumstances – things outside ourselves that we are merely reacting to."

"Our error is we don't try to understand other people's histories. We only see them in one situation and we don't see what they would be like in a different situation. The fundamental attribution error is that we try to use permanent, enduring _labels_ when circumstance and context fit better."

The witch's eyebrows drew up beneath her hat's brim. "I understand the concept all too well, in each of its opposing but equally dangerous results." She gave a wry chuckle, "Although I usually just say I am a poor judge of character. I usually tell students to work hard so their past doesn't hold them captive. But what does this all have to do with you?"

He kicked the brick wall of the alley hard enough to make his foot hurt. "People think that I saved them from You-Know-Who because I'm some kind of Great Warrior of The Light."

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord ..." murmured the witch, a strange irony leavening her voice.

"It's so frustrating!" he half-shouted, "As if I destroyed the Dark Lord because I am some kind of Destroy-The-Dark-Lord Hero. I was fifteen months old at the time! I don't _know_ what happened, but I would _suppose _it had a lot to do with the circumstances and nothing to do with me! People don't care about _me! __T_hey aren't even paying attention to _me!_ They want to shake hands with a _bad explanation!_" Tears threatened to spill out again. He glanced at the Professor hoping she understood. "Do _you _know what really happened?"

"I _have_ formed an idea ... After meeting you, that is."

"Yes?"

"You triumphed over the Dark Lord by being more awful than _he _was; you survived the Killing Curse by being more terrible than Death."

"Ha. Ha. Ha." He kicked the wall again.

She chuckled warmly. "Peace, Harry. Please try to show kindness to those who are kind to you. It might surprise you that they understand your frustration better than you think. You could find in them something you are seeking as well."

She laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Thank you for talking it over with me. I hope I was able to help. Shall we go and buy some gloves?"

Within minutes, Harry had second-hand dragon hide gloves in great condition for ten sickles.

"Let's visit Madam Malkin's next. I fear your Muggle clothing may be attracting attention."

They ran into two more well-wishers along the way, to whom Harry gave due kindness.

When Harry saw Madam Malkin's Robes, he stopped. _Boring! Plain red brick, plain white windows showing off plain black robes. If the __robes shone or __twirled__ or __shot__ rays that tickle__d__ you,_ he thought, _I'd be less surprised. __Everything looks so ordinary and __the __door wide open, as if there __a__re no secrets here and nothing to hide __and absolutely no choices in school clothing._

"I'm going to go off for a few minutes while you get fitted for your robes," the Professor announced. "Will you be all right with that, Mr. Potter?"

He nodded. _I__ hate __getting school __clothes. __I hate it __with __the__ fi__r__e __of a thousand suns. __Perhaps s__he __feel__s __that way t__oo__?_

She tapped his head with her wand. "As you'll need to be clear to Madam Malkin's senses, I am removing the Obfuscation."

"Uh ... " He still cringed each time someone reacted to 'Harry Potter.' _That's not really my name any more!_

"I went to Hogwarts with Madam Malkin. Even then, she was one of the most _composed_ people I knew. She wouldn't turn a hair if You-Know-Who himself walked into her shop." Her voice was reminiscent and very approving. "Madam Malkin won't bother you. She won't let anyone else bother you."

"Where _are_ you going? Just in case, you know, something _does _happen."

She gave him a hard look. "I am going _there,_" she said, pointing at a building across the street which showed the sign of a wooden keg, "to buy a drink. _You _are to get fitted for your robes – _nothing else!_ I will come back to check up on you _shortly._ I _expect _to find Madam Malkin's shop still standing and not in any way on fire!"

Harry gulped.

Madam Malkin turned out to be a bustling old woman who didn't say a word about him even when she saw the scar on his forehead; she shot a sharp look at an assistant who seemed about to say something. Madam Malkin got out a set of animated, writhing bits of cloth to serve as tape measures and set to work examining Harry, the medium of her art.

Next to Harry, a pale young boy with a pointed face and _awesomecool _blonde-white hair seemed to be going through the final stages of being fitted. One of Malkin's two assistants was examining him by tapping the chequerboard-gridded robe he was wearing; she would tap a corner with her wand to loosen or tighten it.

The boy was sneering at her but looked up at Harry with an open expression. "Hello," he said, "Hogwarts, too?"

Harry smiled. _A wizard my own age! __Here is__ this shared suffering of robe-fitting! Does that make us__ friends? __What do __I __say__? __Will __Professor McGonagall __be mad at me__?__ I just __want to __talk to him!_

"That hair!" He smiled cheerfully. "You must be ...?"

"Draco Malfoy," Draco Malfoy looked slightly puzzled.

"It _is _you, Master Malfoy!" Harry figured he could mess around the same way he had been doing all day. "I had always wondered what spells I might use to bleach my hair like yours."

"Bleach?" Draco looked at him blankly.

_He must not know what bleach is._

"Ah, I understand. I wouldn't admit to such a thing myself."

_Awkward! Now what?!_

"It's such an honor to meet you!" Harry burst out.

"Oh," Draco still sounded confused, but his lips stretched in a smug smile. "It's good to meet someone who knows his place."

Harry burbled on. "I'm delighted to meet you, Mr. Malfoy. Just unutterably delighted. And to be attending Hogwarts in your very year!"

"Indeed _I _am pleased to meet someone who knows the family of Malfoy." The boy bequeathed a smile such as the highest of kings might bestow upon the least of his subjects, if that subject were honest, though poor.

_W__ow, that ups the stakes__! __H__e must really understand__. __All those __people __want__ing__ to shake y__our__ hand –_ "When my clothes are fitted, sir, might you deign to shake my hand? I should wish nothing more to put the capper upon this day, nay, this entire month."

The white-blonde-haired boy glared now. Harry blanched. _Oops, that was overdone._

"What have _you _done for the Malfoys that entitles you to such a favour?"

_What __a great __comeback! __N__ext __time someone __gets teary-eyed because I'm shopping __in Diagon Alley__, I'__m __g__oing__ t__o say that__! _Harry bowed his head. "No, no, sir, I understand. I'm sorry for asking. I should be honoured to clean your boots, rather."

"Indeed," Draco snapped. His stern face lightened somewhat. "Tell me, what House do you think you might be sorted into? I'm bound for Slytherin House, of course, like my father Lucius before me. And for you, I'd guess House Hufflepuff or possibly House Elf?"

Thrilled at his success making friends, Harry grinned sheepishly. "Professor McGonagall says that I'm the most Ravenclaw person she's ever seen or heard tell of in legend, so much so that Rowena herself would tell me to get out more, whatever _that _means. I'll undoubtedly end up in Ravenclaw House if the hat isn't screaming too loudly for the rest of us to make out any words, end quote."

"Wow," Draco gave a faint air of approval, followed by a wistful sigh. "Your flattery was great, or I thought so, anyway. You'd do well in Slytherin House. Usually it's not me, it's my father who gets the groveling. And don't do anything to the Sorting Hat. I _hop__e _the other Slytherins will suck up to me now I'm at Hogwarts ... "

_Now __for __the __punchline__! __This is going to be so good__!_ Harry coughed. "Actually, I have no idea who you are."

"_Oh come on!_" Draco snapped, fierce disappointment in his eyes. "Why'd you go and do that, then?" His eyes widened with suspicion. "How do you _not _know about the Malfoys? And what are those _clothes _you're wearing? Are your parents _Muggles?!_"

Harry gulped. _It wasn't an act?_ "Two of my parents are dead," His heart twinged. "My other two parents are Muggles. They're the ones that raised me."

"_What?! __Two of your – _" Draco rocked back. "_Who __are __you?_"

"Harry Potter, pleased to meet you."

"_Harry Potter?!_" gasped the other boy. "_The _Harry – " and he choked off the words.

There was a brief silence.

Then, with bright enthusiasm, "Harry Potter? _The _Harry Potter? Gosh, I've always wanted to meet you!"

_Ouch. I deserved that._

"Um, can we please not do this?" Harry begged.

"Can I have your autograph? No, wait, I want a picture with you first!"

"Look, I'm sorry I said those things_._"

"I'm just so _delighted _to meet you!"

"Please?" Harry couldn't find any way to salvage things now. _Draco hates me._ He groaned.

"But you're Harry Potter, the glorious saviour of the wizarding world! Everyone's hero, Harry Potter! I've always wanted to be just like you when I grow up so I can – "

Draco cut off the words in mid-sentence, his face frozen in absolute horror.

Tall, white-haired, with spotless black robes of the finest quality, one hand gripping a silver-handled cane which took on the character of a deadly weapon just by being in that hand; eyes of gray ice regarding the room with the dispassionate quality of an executioner – a man to whom killing is not painful or even deliciously forbidden. It is just a routine activity like breathing.

That was the man who, just that moment, glided through the open door.

"Draco," Soft, very angry words breathed luxury and also danger, "W_hat _are you _saying?_"

In one split second of panic and doom, Harry came up with a plan: _Save h__im__!_

"Lucius Malfoy!" he gasped, "_The _Lucius Malfoy?"

Coolly murderous eyes regarded him. "Harry Potter."

"I am so, so honoured to meet you!"

The gray eyes widened, a clearly stated threat mingling with surprise.

"Your son has been telling me _all _about you," Harry gushed on, hardly even knowing what was coming out of his mouth but just talking as fast as possible. "But of course I knew about you already. Everyone knows about you, the great Lucius Malfoy! The most honoured laureate of all the House of Slytherin. I've been thinking about trying to get into Slytherin House myself just because I heard you were in it as a child – "

"_What are you saying, Mr. Potter?!_" came a near-scream from the shop door: Professor McGonagall burst in.

On her face was a mask of such outrage that Harry's mouth opened automatically only to block on nothing-to-say.

"Professor McGonagall!" cried Draco. "Is it really you? I've heard so much about you from my father, I've been thinking of trying to get Sorted into Gryffindor so I can – "

"_What?!_" bellowed Lucius Malfoy and Professor McGonagall in perfect unison, standing side-by-side. Their heads swivelled to look at each other. Then they recoiled from one another as though performing a synchronised dance.

There was a sudden flurry of action: Lucius seized Draco's shoulder, clenched down on chequered robes, lifted him completely off the ground (_Now that's levitation!_ Harry's mind added) and flew from the shop.

Then silence reigned for a minute.

In Professor McGonagall's left hand lay a small drinking-glass, tilted over to one side in the forgotten rush, now dripping slow drops of alcohol into a tiny puddle of red wine on the floor. She strode forward into the shop until she was opposite Madam Malkin.

"Madam Malkin," came the calm inquiry, "What has been happening here?"

Madam Malkin looked back silently for four seconds. She cracked up. She fell against the wall, wheezing out laughter. That set off both of her assistants. One fell to her hands and knees on the floor in uncontrollable giggles.

Professor McGonagall slowly turned to look at Harry, freezing him with her lined face. "I leave you alone for six minutes. Six minutes, Mr. Potter, by the very clock."

"I was joking around!"

"_Draco Malfoy said in front of his father that he wanted to be sorted into Gryffindor! _Joking around _isn't enough _to _do _that!" The Deputy Headmistress paused to try to take a breath. "What part of 'get fitted for robes' sounded to you like _please cast a Confundus Charm on the entire __world?__!_"

"He was in a situation where those actions made sense – "

"No. Don't explain. I don't want to know what happened in here, ever. Whatever dark power inhabits you, it is _contagious._ I don't want to end up like poor Draco Malfoy, poor Madam Malkin or her two poor assistants."

Harry sighed a soft sad little sigh. Why _wo__n't __she __listen to __my__ explanation?_

He looked at the old woman, still wheezing against the wall. The other assistant was hiccoughing and trying to breathe between giggles. He looked down at his own tape-measure-draped body.

"I'm not quite done being fitted for clothes," He put genuine kindness into his voice. "Why don't you go back and have another drink?"

_It's not like someone turned into a cat,_ he thought with dry humor.

––

Six galleons, two sickles later, with four sets of fitted robes tucked into his pouch, Professor McGonagall took his hand firmly. "Now we will have no more side tracks or we will not finish what we set out to do today!"

She tapped his forehead again and without another word dragged him across the street to Neddle Argop's Potions Shop.

"Professor, why does Lucius Malfoy look like a wealthy baron who tortures people?"

"Mr. Potter, I truly regret that you have met that man already. I will say nothing except to _stay away from him!_" She stopped to give him her #2 Stern Look.

"Yes, Professor." He wanted to defuse the situation. _Of course,__ I'm going to investigate this at the first possible opportunity._

The inside of the Potions Shop was awash with a sharp smell: rotting eggs, moldy things, barrels, bottles and boxes. A counter piled high with detritus at the rear of the shop seemed to hide the large, bald wizard with a well-trimmed yellow beard. The front of the counter, at the eye-level of children had a large sign in fiery letters that seemed to smolder:

"REASONABLE RESTRICTION OF UNDERAGE SORCERY.

"Potion ingredients will not be sold to unaccompanied children.

"By order of the Ministry of Magic."

Harry whispered to the Professor, "How old is 'of age'?"

"The trace is placed on your wand until you are 18 years old, Mr. Potter. That is Magical Britain's age of majority."

But her voice had not been low enough. Seven people suddenly noticed the newest entrants to the shop. They quickly homed in on him and his scar.

"The Boy-Who-Lived," breathed a muscular square-jawed witch. "A pleasure to meet you."

She offered a scarred hand to shake.

"What have _you _done for the House of Potter that entitles you to such a favour?" He demurred, trying but failing to mimic Draco's cool aloofness.

The witch recoiled as though stung. "Well I never! McGonagall, what is the meaning of this?" She pointed an enormous finger at his lightning bolt scar.

Professor McGonagall had an equally shocked face. "Amelia, please, Harry has been peppered with people who want to shake his hand. Today is his first day in Diagon Alley. I think he just invented that for a laugh."

Amelia dropped her hand, even as Harry's mind raced. _How did the Professor know?_

"Ha." The witch grinned at him. "Here, Harry, shake."

Next in line was a man with cool, moist hands that seemed to cling to the handshake for a long time. Harry's skin began to crawl.

Professor McGonagall seemed close to tears. She turned away from Harry, as if resigned to the small crowd as part of her penance.

––

Harry's beginner cauldron and potions set was two galleons (50% off for Hogwarts students!); with the telescope and phials he spent two galleons, 12 sickles.

"Bag of _okane,_" he whispered. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.

He withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the pouch. He asked again, "Bag of tokens of economic exchange." That time his hand came out empty.

"Give me back the bag that I just put in." Out came the bag of gold once more.

"Professor," he pled as they walked, "can you give me two words – one for gold and one for something else that isn't money? In a language that I wouldn't know? But don't tell me which is which."

"_Ahava _and _zahav,_" came the prompt reply. "That's Hebrew, and the other word means love."

"Thanks. Bag of _ahava._" Empty.

"Bag of _zahav._" Out popped the bag.

"Zahav is gold?" He concluded. The Professor nodded.

He mulled over the experimental data. Though crude, it was enough to support at least one conclusion:

"Phooey! This is nonsense!" he complained.

The witch beside him lifted a lofty eyebrow. "Problems, Mr. Potter?"

"How can it know that 'bag of 106 galleons' is okay but not 'bag of 100 plus 6 galleons'? It can count but it can't add? It can understand nouns, but not some noun phrases that mean the same thing? The person who made this probably didn't speak Japanese and I don't speak any Hebrew, so it's not using their knowledge and it's not using my knowledge – " He waved a hand helplessly. "The rules seem sort of consistent, but how does a pouch end up with voice recognition – natural language understanding! – but not sentence parsing or math?" He gasped for breath, "What is going on in there?!"

"Magic," was her reply.

––

**Author's Note:** Some pictures if you like pictures:

ithacavoice dot com/2015/10/2400-harry-potter-fans-to-transform-ithaca-street-into-diagon-alley/


	5. Chapter 5

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 5

**The Harry Potter universe is J.K. Rowling's universe.**

––

"That's just a _word! _Even after you tell me that, I can't make any new predictions! It's exactly like saying 'phlogiston' or 'elan vital' or 'emergence' or 'complexity'!" Harry planted his feet and put both his hands on his hips.

The witch with the pointy hat laughed aloud at the sight. "But it _is _magic, Mr. Potter."

He slumped over. "With respect, I think this is very important."

"With respect, Mr. Potter, I'm quite sure it is."

_The Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in 1956, was the first conference ever on the topic. They coined the phrase "Artificial Intelligence." They quickly listed key problems such as making computers understand language, learn and improve themselves. They suggested, perfectly serious, that significant advances on these problems might be made by ten scientists working together for two months! Two months!_

_No. Chin up. You're just _starting _on the problem of unravelling all the secrets of magic. You don't actually _know _whether it's going to be too difficult to do in two months._

"Have you heard of other wizards asking these sorts of questions or doing this sort of experimenting with magic?" It just seemed so _obvious _to him, but it was a smaller world here in Diagon Alley. _Maybe no one ha__s__ investigate__d__ the retrieval charm yet._

The Deputy Headmistress pursed her lips. She shrugged. "I'm still not sure I understand exactly what you are doing, Mr. Potter. I've seen Muggleborn students try to get Muggle science to work inside Hogwarts. People invent new Charms and Potions every year. The Goblins have investigated many spells."

Harry shook his head. "Technology isn't the same thing as science at all. Trying various ways to do something isn't the same as experimenting to figure out the rules."

He grumbled inside. _Plenty of people tried to invent flying machines by trying various things-with-wings. But only the Wright Brothers built a wind tunnel to measure lift_.

"Just how many Muggle-raised children _do _you get at Hogwarts every year?"

"Perhaps ten or so?"

Harry missed a step, almost tripping over his own feet. "_Ten?!_"

The Muggles were six billion and counting. If you were one in a million, there were seven of you in London plus a thousand more in China. It was inevitable that the Muggle population would produce _some_ 11-year-olds who could do calculus. Harry knew he wasn't the only one. He'd met other prodigies in mathematical competitions. In fact he'd been thoroughly trounced by competitors who probably spent literally _all day _practising maths problems, who'd _never _read a science-fiction book and who would burn out _completely _before puberty. (He was something of a sore loser.)

But ... in the wizarding world ...

_Ten Muggle-raised children per year, who'd all ended their Muggle educations at the age of 11? Professor McGonagall might be biased, but she claims that Hogwarts is the largest and most eminent wizarding school in the world ... and it only educates up to the age of 17!_

_She __undoubtedly kn__o__w__s__ every last detail of how you __go__ about turning into a cat. But she seem__s__ to have never __heard __of the scientific method. To her it __i__s just __a__ Muggle __thing__. __In fact __she __doesn't__ even seem __curious __about __the __secrets __that __might be hiding behind the natural language understanding of the Retrieval Charm._

_That leaves two possibilities,_ he concluded.

_Possibility one: Magic is so incredibly opaque, convoluted and impenetrable that everyone gave up long ago. I can do no better._

_Or __..._

Harry cracked his knuckles in determination, but they only made a quiet sort of clicking sound, rather than echoing ominously off the walls of Diagon Alley.

_Possibility two: I'll be taking over the world._

After a moment he admitted to himself: _It may__ take longer than two months. Muggle__s __di__dn't __land on__ the moon __the__ week after Galileo._

_But still,_ he contemplated his surroundings.

_You're mine now._

He thus claimed the walls of Diagon Alley, and all the shops and items, and all the shopkeepers and customers, and all the lands and people of wizarding Britain and all the wider wizarding world and the entire greater universe of which scientists understood so much less than they believed.

_I, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, do now claim this territory in the name of Science._

Lightning completely failed to flash and boom in the cloudless skies.

"What are you smiling about?" inquired the Professor, warily.

"I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution. But how can Hogwarts be the best magical school in the world when its classes are so small?"

"I have the distinct feeling that I ought to be doing something about this," she sighed. "However, the school has had to reduce class sizes due to the effects of the last wizarding war. Many families died."

He had no idea how to respond to that. "You seem sad," he admitted.

"Aye, there's my own hopes of teaching the children, but also the hopes of our entire country. Hogwarts is all I have now."

Making an effort to be cheerful, Harry called out, "What's that over there?" and skipped over to a shop with an open display; Professor McGonagall followed.

––

Harry had his robes, potions ingredients and cauldron and, oh, a few more things, items that seemed like good things to carry in Harry's mokeskin pouch. Smart, sensible purchases.

He genuinely did not understand why Professor McGonagall was looking so _suspicious_.

Right now, Harry was in a shop expensive enough to display in the twisting main street of Diagon Alley. The shop had an open front with merchandise laid out on slanted wooden rows, guarded only by slight gray glows and a young-looking saleswitch in a much-shortened version of witch's robes that exposed her calves and elbows.

Harry was examining the wizarding equivalent of a first-aid kit, the Emergency Healing Pack Plus. There were two self-tightening tourniquets. The syringe of what looked like liquid fire was supposed to drastically slow circulation in a treated area while maintaining oxygenation of the blood for up to three minutes, if you needed to prevent a poison from spreading. A white wrap would temporarily numb pain. Not to mention any number of other items that Harry totally failed to comprehend, like the Bezoar or the "Dementor Exposure Treatment," which smelled like ordinary chocolate. Or there was the "Bafflesnaffle Counter," a small quivering egg with a placard showing how to jam it up someone's nostril.

"A definite buy at five galleons, wouldn't you agree?" He said to the Professor. The salesgirl hovering nearby nodded eagerly. He expected the Professor to make some sort of approving remark about his prudence and preparedness. What he was getting instead could only be described as the Evil Eye.

"And just _why_ do you expect to _need_ a healer's kit, young man?" came her sceptical reply. (After the unfortunate Incident at the Potions shop, she was trying to avoid saying "Mr. Potter" while anyone else was nearby.)

His mouth opened and closed. "I don't expect to need it! It's just in case!"

"Just in case of _what?_"

His eyes widened. "You think I'm _planning _to do something dangerous? That's why I want a medical kit?"

A look of grim suspicion and ironic disbelief was the answer.

"Great Scott! Were you also thinking that when I bought the Feather-Falling Potion, the Gillyweed and the bottle of Food and Water Pills?"

"Yes."

He shook his head in amazement. "Just what sort of plan do you think I have going here?"

"I don't know," came the dark imprecation, "but it ends either in you delivering a ton of silver to Gringotts or in detention."

"Wow," He realised that she was serious. "You really think I'm planning to do something dangerous."

"Yes."

"Like that's the _only _reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but __what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with_?_"

"Gryffindors," spat Professor McGonagall, the word carrying a freight of bitterness and despair that fell like an eternal curse on all youthful enthusiasm and high spirits.

"Deputy Headmistress Professor Minerva McGonagall," he said, putting his hands sternly on his hips. "I am not going to be in Gryffindor – "

At this point the Deputy Headmistress interjected something about how if he _was _she would figure out how to kill a hat, which odd remark Harry let pass without comment, though the salesgirl seemed to be having a sudden coughing fit.

" – I am going to be in Ravenclaw. You don't understand me _at all__. _I don't _like _danger, it is _scary. _I am being _cautious_. I am being prepared."

Professor McGonagall's stance slightly softened – mostly when Harry said he was heading for Ravenclaw. "What in the world are you preparing for?"

"Perhaps one of my classmates gets bitten by a horrible monster. I scrabble frantically in my mokeskin pouch for something that could help her. She looks at me and with her last breath says, _'__Why weren't you prepared?' __A_s her eyes close I know she won't ever forgive me – "

Harry heard the salesgirl gasp. He looked up to see her staring at him with her lips pressed tight. She whirled and fled into the deeper recesses of the shop.

_What ... ?_

Professor McGonagall regarded Harry with eyes like smoldering coals. It wasn't a full adult Wrongdoing Face, but her flat, controlled expression alarmed him. "You must remember, Mr. Potter, that there was a _war_ in this country not ten years ago. Everyone has lost someone. To speak of _friends dying in your arms_ is not done lightly."

"I – I didn't mean to – " The inference dropped like a falling stone into his exceptionally vivid imagination. The war had ended ten years ago so that girl would have been at most 8 or 9; he had blithely chattered on about someone breathing their last breath. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – " He choked up. He turned to run. But he couldn't run from the Deputy Headmistress. He didn't even have a wand yet. "I'm sorry!"

There came a heavy sigh from behind him. "I know you are, Mr. Potter."

He dared to peek at her. She only seemed sad, now. "I'm sorry," he repeated, feeling wretched. "Did anything like that happen to – " He shut his lips and slapped a hand over his mouth for good measure.

The witch's face became sadder. "You must learn to think before you speak, Mr. Potter, or else go through life without many friends. That has been the fate of many a Ravenclaw. I hope it will not be yours."

Harry wanted to run away even more.

"But to answer your question, Mr. Potter, no, nothing like _that _has ever happened to me. Certainly I've watched a friend breathe their last, once or seven times. But they did not curse me as they died! Why would you _say _such a thing, Mr. Potter?"

"I, I," Harry swallowed. "I think of what can go wrong. I've practiced! _Nowhere _is perfectly safe! What if my parents have a heart attack when I go home for Christmas? I can't use magic at home – Madam Pomfrey won't be there, I'll need a healer's kit of my own – "

"_What _in Merlin's name ...?" She looked down at Harry, her expression torn between annoyance and concern. "Why are you convinced you must ever guard against terrible things happening to you?"

He stared at her. _Isn't it obvious?_

"Well ... " He paused to formulate an explanation to a Professor-witch he didn't know very well.

"It's the planning fallacy. The best way to not commit the planning fallacy is to ask how bad things were the last time. That's called using the outside view instead of the inside view."

He punctuated with his hand. "But when you're doing something new and can't do that, you just have to be really extra super pessimistic. Enough that reality actually comes out _better _than you planned as often as it comes out worse."

To his complete surprise, Professor McGonagall was nodding.

"It's actually _really hard _to be _so _pessimistic that you stand a decent chance of _undershooting _real life. If I made this big effort to be gloomy, imagined one of my classmates getting bitten – but instead the Death Eaters attacked the whole school to get me – I committed the planning fallacy. But on a happier note – "

"Stop!" she cried out.

He stopped. He was just about to say, _at least they knew the Dark Lord wouldn't attack, since he was dead._

There was an abstracted look on her face (just like Harry's own face earlier when he experimented on the pouch). "I shall have to think about this." She turned back toward the shop just as the salesgirl peeked out. The salesgirl made a small eep as she disappeared again.

"Um," he said, hoping against hope, "Can I please have a healer's kit?"

The witch paused. She looked back at him steadily. "If I say that it is too expensive? If I tell you that you won't need it? Then what?"

His face twisted in bitterness. "Exactly what you're thinking, Professor McGonagall. _Exactly _what you're thinking. I conclude you're another adult I can't trust. I start planning how to get my hands on a healer's kit anyway."

"I am your guardian on this trip." A hint of danger was in her voice. "I _will__ not _allow you to push me around."

"I understand." He hid the resentment from his own voice. McGonagall had told him to think before he spoke. _I know I __won't remember that tomorrow, but __can I __at least remember it for five minutes?_

Her eyebrows came down to their normal place above her eyes. "All right, young man. You may buy a healer's kit."

Harry's jaw dropped in surprise.

––

The salesgirl imitated a casual walk as she approached this most formidable of witches standing in front of the recognisable and unrecognisable items still laid out on the slanted wooden display, a gray glow still protecting them.

"I'm sorry," she said and Harry spoke at almost the same moment, "I apologise for – "

They broke off, looked at each other and the salesgirl laughed a little. "I didn't mean to get you in trouble with Professor McGonagall." Her voice was conspiratorial. "I hope she wasn't _too _awful to you."

"_Della!_" Professor McGonagall sounded scandalised.

"Bag of gold." Harry called to his pouch. Looking back up at the salesgirl, he counted out five galleons. "Don't worry, I understand that she's only awful to me because she loves me."

He paid the salesgirl while Professor McGonagall spluttered something. "One Emergency Healing Pack Plus, please."

It was actually sort of unnerving to see how the Widening Lip swallowed the briefcase-sized medical kit. Harry couldn't help wondering what would happen if he tried climbing into the mokeskin pouch himself: only he could take himself out again, apparently.

When the pouch was done ... eating ... his hard-won purchase, Harry swore he heard a small burping sound afterward. That _had _to have been spelled in on purpose. The alternate explanation was too horrifying to contemplate: Lungs? Esophagus? He looked back up at the Professor, as they began walking through Diagon Alley once more. "Where to next?"

She pointed toward a shop that looked as if it had been made from flesh instead of bricks, covered in fur instead of paint. "Small pets are permitted at Hogwarts. You could get an owl to send letters, for example?"

"Can I pay a knut or something to _rent _an owl when I need to send mail?"

"Most assuredly. Hogwarts students may use the school owls free of charge."

"Then I think emphatically _no._"

She nodded, as though ticking off a point. "Might I ask why not?"

"I had a pet rock once. It died."

"You don't think you could take care of a pet?"

"I _could._" He clarified, "But I would obsess all day whether I'd remembered to feed it. I'd worry it was slowly starving in its cage, wondering where its master was and why there wasn't any food."

"That poor owl," Professor McGonagall said in a soft voice. "Abandoned like that. I wonder what it would do."

"Well, I expect it'd get really hungry. It would start trying to claw its way out of the cage or the box or whatever, though it probably wouldn't have much luck with that – " He stopped short.

The witch went on, still in that soft voice. "Yes?"

"Excuse me." He reached up to take the Professor by the hand, gently but firmly, steering her into yet another alleyway; after ducking so many well-wishers the process had become almost routine. "Please cast that silencing spell."

"_Quietus._"

His voice shook. "That owl does _not _represent me, my parents _never _locked me in a cupboard and left me to starve, I do _not _have abandonment fears and I _don't like the trend of your thoughts, Professor!_"

She looked down at him gravely. "What thoughts would those be, Mr. Potter?"

"You think I was," he struggled to even say, "I was _abused?!_"

"Were you?"

"_No!_" He shouted. "No! If anything like that happened I would call the police! And report it to the head teacher! And look up social services in the phone book! And tell Grandpa, Grandma and Mrs. Figg! But my parents _never _did anything like that, never ever _ever! _How _dare _you suggest such a thing!"

The witch gazed at him steadily. "It is my duty as Deputy Headmistress to investigate possible signs of abuse in the children under my care."

His anger continued its heedless, explosive path. "Don't you ever _dare _breathe a word of these, these _insinuations _to anyone else! An accusation like that can ruin people even when the parents are completely innocent! I've read about it! The _system _doesn't know how to _stop_, it doesn't believe the parents _or _the children! _Don't you dare threaten my family with that! I won't let you destroy my home!_"

"Harry," she said softly. She reached out a hand towards him –

He took a fast step back. His hand snapped up and knocked hers away.

She froze. After careful consideration she took a step back as well. "Harry, it's all right. I believe you."

"_Do you?_" he hissed, the adrenalin roaring through his blood, "Or are you just waiting to get away from me so you can file the papers?"

"Harry, I saw your house. I saw you with your parents. They love you. You love them. I do believe you when you say that your parents are not abusing you. But I _had _to ask because there is something strange at work here."

He stared at her. A minute passed. He waited another minute to calm down a little more.

"Like what?" He finally said in an almost-normal voice.

"Harry, I've seen many abused children in my time at Hogwarts! It would break your heart to know how many. And, when you're happy, you don't behave like one of those children, not at _all_. You smile at strangers, you hug people, I put my hand on your shoulder and you don't flinch. But sometimes, only sometimes, you say or do something that seems _very _much like ... someone who spent his first eleven years locked in a cellar. Not the loving family that I saw." The Deputy Headmistress tilted her head, her expression puzzled again.

He took this in, processing it. The anger faded as it dawned on him that he was being listened to respectfully; his family wasn't in danger.

"And how _do _you explain your observations, Professor?"

"I don't know." Her brow furrowed. "But it's possible that something could have happened to you that you don't remember."

Fury threatened him again. That sounded all too much like what he'd read in the newspaper stories of shattered families. "Suppressed memory is a load of _pseudoscience! _People do _not _repress traumatic memories, they remember them all _too _well for the rest of their lives!"

"No, Mr. Potter. There is a charm called Obliviation."

That stopped him. "A spell that erases memories?"

The Professor nodded. "But not all the effects of the experience, if you see what I'm saying, Mr. Potter."

A chill went down his spine. _That _hypothesis ... could _not _be easily refuted. "But my parents couldn't do that!"

"Indeed not," she admitted. "It would have taken someone from the wizarding world. There's ... no way to be certain, I'm afraid."

His mind began working on it. "Professor, how sure are you? What alternative explanations could there be?"

She opened her hands, as though to show their emptiness. "Sure? I'm sure of _nothing_, Mr. Potter. In all my life I've never met anyone else like you. Sometimes you just don't seem eleven years old or even all that _human_."

His eyebrows rose toward the sky –

"I'm sorry!" she added quickly, palms outstretched. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Potter. There are lesser spells like False Memory Charms which plant false memories or legilimency, which reads your mind. They can be detected, where Obliviation is nearly impossible to prove. False Memory Charms, for instance, often leave the person nastily exhausted afterward. My words, I'm afraid, came out sounding more confident than I really am – "

"On the contrary, Headmistress," he said, brightening. "I shall take it as a very great compliment you have trusted me. But would you mind if I offered an alternative?"

"Please do." Her voice conveyed genuine desire to hear his explanation.

"Children don't do well in isolation," he began. "My father could probably reach me if he was, you know, actually _trying, _instead of trying mainly to come up with new reasons not to change his mind – "

He paused to compose himself.

"I'm _isolated_. I've been isolated my whole life. Maybe that has some of the same effects as being locked in a cellar. I read instead of playing. My parents love me, but they don't feel obliged to respond to reason. Sometimes I feel like they're the children – children who _won't__ listen _but have absolute power over my whole existence. I try not to be too bitter about it but I also try to be _honest _with myself, so, yeah, I'm bitter toward my parents for how they treat me. I have an anger management problem as well, but I'm working on it. That's all."

"_That's all?_"

He nodded firmly. "That's all. Surely, Professor, even in magical Britain, the normal explanation is always worth _considering?_"

The Headmistress was floored. Somehow she managed to contain her emotions and show nothing of it on her face. _What kind of boy is Harry? __O__ne moment __h__e comfort__s__ the grieving salesgirl. __T__he next moment __he is __enflamed in awful wrath, and the next, __he __calmly analyz__es__ it with strength I might only manage once a week?_

_He is the most volatile mix of magic and teenage angst I have seen in many years. Yet I still trust him! I even sympathize! Oh, what is to be done, Albus?!_

––

It was later in the day, the sun lowering in the summer sky, shoppers beginning to peter out from the streets. Some shops had already closed; Harry had spent hours poring over the books of Flourish and Blotts. Though he had only spent six galleons, that was largely because even seventh-year "Arithmancy" invoked nothing more challenging than trigonometry.

This moment, however, dreams of easy research were far from his mind. This moment, they were walking into Ollivander's: Makers of Fine Wands Since 382BC. For some reason, the back of his neck prickled again. He suppressed an urge to run his hand through his hair.

"Good afternoon, Harry Potter." An old man stood before them, his wide, pale eyes like silver torches in the dim shop.

"Hello," he replied automatically.

"You have your mother's eyes. It seems just yesterday she was here." The shopkeeper had a breezy voice. "Willow and unicorn hair, ten and a quarter inches. Nice wand for charm work." He seemed to be speaking mostly to himself.

"Your father's was mahogany and phoenix feather, 11 inches. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration."

The man snapped out of his reverie, suddenly noticing Professor McGonagall behind Harry.

"Hello, Minerva. How is your wand?"

"Hello, Mr. Ollivander. I keep it polished."

"Good girl." Harry gaped to hear the Headmistress addressed so informally, but the man breezed right on. He began taking boxes down from the shelves that lined the shop.

"Beech-wood and dragon heartstring, nine inches... ?"

"Maple and phoenix feather, seven inches... ?"

"Ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches... ?"

He asked nothing of Harry. The pile of wands was getting embarrassingly high. As if something caught his mind, Mr. Ollivander touched a finger to his chin and said softly, "I wonder."

Harry suddenly found himself being offered a wand. For the first time in his life, he hesitated.

––

**Author's Note:** Some pictures if you like pictures:

pinterest dot com/pin/391953973803069359/


	6. Chapter 6

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 6

**Minerva McGonagall belongs to J.K. Rowling. Thus by transitive closure, so does Harry Potter.**

––

Even before Mr. Ollivander said, "Holly and phoenix feather, 11 inches," Harry felt something happen at the back of his neck again. His scalp was suddenly warm. His arm had goose bumps. He closed his hand around the wand and it lifted his hand into the air all on its own.

He wiggled his arm partly to shake off the goosebumps. Multicoloured sparks shot out (of the wand), which really shouldn't have come as such an extra shock after everything else he'd seen, but somehow –

__I can do magic.__

__Me. As in, me personally. I am magical; I am a wizard.__

He __felt __the magic in his arm and in his mind. It was like an eye that had remained forever closed, so that he didn't even realise that it was in darkness; suddenly the eye opened and saw the world. The shock of it poured through him, touching pieces of himself, awakening them, then faded away in seconds. It left only the certain knowledge that he was now a wizard; that he had always been one; and in some strange way, he had always known it.

Mr. Ollivander was staring at him, the old man's eyes only three inches from his own –

"It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother, why, its brother gave you that scar."

He pointed a delicate, bony finger at Harry's forehead.

Harry's left hand unconsciously rose and rubbed his scar.

_What ... __exactly ... ?_

His wand cost him seven galleons.

"You're a full wizard now," McGonagall smiled at him when they were around the corner from Ollivander's. "Congratulations!"

He nodded, a wave of exhaustion sweeping over him. They'd skipped lunch.

"What do you think of the wizarding world?" said she.

"It's strange. I ought to be thinking about everything I've seen of magic, Goblins ... everything that I now know is possible, everything I now know to be a lie, everything I have before me to do. Yet I find myself distracted by relative trivialities like," he lowered his voice, "the whole Boy-Who-Lived thing."

There didn't seem to be anyone nearby, but there wasn't any point tempting fate.

The Professor _ahemmed_. "Really? You don't say."

He nodded. "Yes. It's just... _odd _to find out that you were part of this grand story: the quest to defeat the great and terrible Dark Lord. But then one night long ago it was over. Finished. Ended."

He clenched his hands into fists. "Like you're Frodo Baggins but you learn your parents took you to Mount Doom to toss in the Ring when you were one year old and you don't even remember."

Her smile had grown somewhat fixed.

"It's really hard to live the rest of your life after that. 'Gosh, Harry, what have you done since you defeated the Dark Lord? Your own bookshop? That's great! Say, did you know I named my child after you?'" He sighed wistfully. "Maybe I'm wishing there were some loose ends from the quest, just so I could say that I _participated _somehow."

"Oh?" she quieried, her voice pitched a little high. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, for example, you mentioned that my parents were betrayed. Who betrayed them?"

"Sirius Black." She hissed the name. "He's in Azkaban. Wizarding prison."

"Is it possible that Sirius Black will break out of prison, I'll have to track him down and defeat him in some sort of spectacular duel? Better yet – I could put a large bounty on his head, hide out in Australia and wait for the results?"

She blinked. Twice. "Not likely. No one has ever escaped from Azkaban. And I very much doubt that _he _will be the first."

_That __"__no one __has __ever __escaped from Azkaban" line __is__ too good to be true__. __M__aybe with magic you __can __actually __have __a 100% perfect prison, especially if you had a wand and they __did__ not. The best way to get out would be to not go there in the first place._

"All right then. Sounds like it's been nicely wrapped up." He sighed again, scrubbing his palm over his head. "Maybe the Dark Lord didn't _really _die that night? Not completely. His spirit lingers, whispering to people in nightmares that bleed over into the waking world, searching for a way back into the living lands he swore to destroy and now, in accordance with the ancient prophecy, he and I are locked in a deadly duel where the winner shall lose and the loser shall win – "

The Headmistress' head swivelled, her body frozen, her eyes darting around, as though to search the street for listeners.

"I'm joking, Professor!" Harry felt some annoyance.

_Sheesh, why did she always take everything so seriously –_

A slow sinking sensation began to dawn in the pit of his stomach.

The Professor looked at him with a calm expression. A very, _very _calm expression. Then a smile was put on. "Of course you are, Mr. Potter."

_Uh oh__._

If he had to formalise the wordless inference, if he had to explain what he just noticed, it would have come out: _If Professor McGonagall d__id__ what I just saw _naturally_ because of __m__e and my__ bad jokes, she is one strange Professor. But if she __carefully controll__ed__ herself __because I just found out something __she is hiding –_

But his actual thought was simply, _Uh oh__._

He turned his own head to scan the street. Nope, no one nearby. "He's _not _dead, is he."

"Mr. Potter – "

"The Dark Lord is alive. Of _course _he's alive. It was an act of utter optimism for me to have even _dreamed _otherwise. I must have taken leave of my senses. I can't imagine what I was thinking! Someone claimed he burned up. Someone said his unblockable curse didn't kill me. It's pretty far-fetched. Why should I believe it? Clearly I have much left to learn about the art of proper pessimism."

"Mr. Potter – !"

"At least tell me there's not really a prophecy ... " She was still giving him that bright, fixed smile. "Oh, you have _got _to be kidding me!"

"Mr. Potter, you shouldn't go inventing things to worry about!"

"Are you actually going to try _that_ line on me now?! Imagine my reaction later when I find out that there was something to worry about after all."

Her smile faltered.

Harry slumped. "I have a whole world of magic to analyse. I do _not _have time for this!"

Then both of them shut up, as a man in flowing orange robes appeared on the street. Her eyes tracked him, unobtrusively, as he slowly passed them by. Harry's mouth was moving. He had a huge headache, right on his temple where the scar was. He chewed hard on his lip, hard enough a tiny spot of blood appeared.

When the orange-robed man had passed into the distance, Harry spoke again in a low murmur. "Are you going to tell me the truth now, Professor McGonagall? And don't bother trying to wave it off."

"You're 11 years old, Mr. Potter!" Her voice was harsh.

"Right. Subhuman. Sorry ... for a moment there, I forgot."

"These are dreadful and important matters! They are _secret, _Mr. Potter! It is a _catastrophe _that you, still a child, know even this much! You must not tell anyone! Do you understand? Absolutely no one!"

At that, he got so angry his blood went cold instead of hot, the pain in his forehead filling him with terrible clarity. He thought over his tactics:

_Point out that you have a right to know: Failure. Eleven-year-old children do not have __the__ right to know anything._

_Say that you will not be friends any more: Failure! She does not value your friendship __that much__._

_Point out that you will be in danger if you do not know: Failure. Plans __are__ already __in place __with you __ignoran__t__. The _certain _inconvenience of rethinking will seem far __worse__ than the mere _uncertain _chance of __some __danger to you__._

_Plead with her: Failure! Her embarrassment at being discovered __is temporarily blinding her to__ any empathy she might __feel __for you._

_Justice and reason __will__ fail __you__. You must either find something you have that she wants, or find something you can do which she fears ..._

A moment later:

"Well then, Professor," his voice growled without him knowing. "It sounds like I have something you want. You can, if you like, tell me the truth, the whole truth, and in return I will keep your secrets. Or you can try to keep me ignorant so you can use me as a pawn, in which case I will owe you nothing."

Her eyes blazed. Her voice descended into a hiss. "You dare – !"

"How dare you?!" He spat back.

"You would _blackmail _me twice in one day?"

His lips twisted. "I tried to talk to you! I am giving you a chance to protect your precious secret. If you refuse I will have every natural motive to make inquiries elsewhere. It won't be to spite you, but because I _have to know!__"_

He drew in a shuddering breath. "Can you see beyond your pointless anger that a child has disobeyed? Any sane adult would at least talk it over! Look at it from my perspective! How would you feel if it was you?"

He watched her – observed her harsh breathing. _I think it's time to__ ease off the pressure__. __L__et her simmer for a while._

"You don't have to decide right away." He forced a weak smile. "I'll understand if you want time to think about my offer. But I'll warn you of one thing." His voice got even colder. "Don't try that obliviation spell on me. Some time ago I worked out a signal. I have already sent that signal to myself. If I find that signal and I don't remember sending it – " He let his voice trail off significantly.

Her face shifted to incredulity, then sharp pain, then went blank. "I ... wasn't thinking of obliviating you, Mr. Potter ... But why would you have invented such a signal if you didn't know about – ?"

"I thought of it while reading a science-fiction book, said to myself, well, just in case... No, I won't tell you the signal. I'm not that dense."

"I hadn't planned to ask," She seemed to fold in on herself, suddenly very old and very tired. "This has been a most exhausting day, Mr. Potter. Can we get your trunk? I will trust you not to speak of this until I have had time to think. Keep in mind that there are only two other people in the whole world who know about this matter: Headmaster Albus Dumbledore and Professor Severus Snape."

_Aha! New information. That is a peace offering._

Harry nodded and turned to look forward. His blood slowly began to warm over once more. He started walking.

"I've got to find some way to kill an immortal Dark Wizard." He sighed in frustration. "I really wish you had told me that before I started shopping."

––

The trunk shop was more richly appointed than any other shop Harry had visited. The curtains were lush with a delicate pattern, the floor and walls of polished wood and the trunks occupied places of honor on ivory platforms. The salesman's robes sat only a cut below those of Lucius Malfoy; he spoke with exquisite, oily politeness to both Harry and Professor McGonagall.

Harry asked his questions. The trunk of heavy-looking wood stood out: not polished but warm, solid, carved with the pattern of a guardian dragon whose eyes sometimes shifted to look at anyone near it. Of course, this trunk had a charm so it was light, could shrink on command or sprout small clawed tentacles from its bottom to squirm after its owner. It had two drawers on each of four sides that each had compartments as big as the whole trunk. The lid had four locks each of which revealed a different space inside. The best part was a handle on the bottom for a flat drawer containing a staircase that led down into a small, lighted room that would hold, he thought, around twelve bookcases.

_With luggages like this, I don't know why anyone bothers owning a house._

90 gold galleons. That was the price of a good trunk, lightly used. At around 50 British pounds to the galleon, it was enough to buy a second-hand car. It would be more expensive than everything else Harry had ever bought in his whole life all put together.

85 galleons. That was how much was left in the bag of gold he had been allowed to take out of Gringotts.

The Deputy Headmistress wore a look of chagrin upon her face. After a long day's shopping she hadn't needed to ask him how much gold was left in the bag, which meant the Professor was good at mental arithmetic.

"I'm sorry, young man. This is entirely my fault. I would offer to take you back to Gringotts, but the bank will be closed for all but emergency services now."

He wondered what to say.

"Well," she sighed as she swung on one heel. "We may as well go, I suppose."

_... __keep in mind __s__he __u__sed__ rational __thought __instead of __just righteous__ fury __when I defied her__. __I__t could __be__, __with __an immortal Dark Lord to fight, she __merely __need__s __my __goodwill. But most adults __couldn't even d__o that __i__f __a child challenged__ them ..._

"Professor?" he ventured. The witch turned to look at him.

He took a deep breath. In spite of his logic, his heart hammered.

_Here comes a__ heap of trouble. But s__he __wouldn't __let me!__ I would have taken more gold but she __preferred to stick to a test of my character__! __She still thought I might just be a poor, abused little boy who needed to remain powerless, dependent on her for everything._

It took effort to find a way through to a solution. He spoke:

"You thought my 20 galleons would be more than enough. Even after the healing pack? Perhaps you unconsciously thought 100 galleons would suffice. It's the planning fallacy: we just aren't pessimistic enough."

He looked in her eyes, hoping for some sign. She gave none, still locked in an epic staring contest with him.

"If it'd been up to me, I'd have taken 200 galleons just to be sure. I could have returned the extra later. _You_ could have held onto it. I really feel it's down to you not wanting me to have it, because young boys just should not hold large amounts of gold. I would have asked but I thought you'd get even more angry than you already were. Was I wrong?"

"Your appraisal of the situation is quite good," grudging admiration in her voice, "But, young man – "

"You see why I struggle to trust adults?" Somehow he kept his voice steady. "They fly into anger the instant you reason with them! To them it's defiance – insolence! – a challenge to their higher tribal status. I need role models who don't get angry! If anything really important comes up, I need to be able to trust you!"

He clarified, "Even if you listen with deep concern to whatever I say – because that's also part of the _role _of someone playing a concerned adult – would you change your actions? Would you behave differently, after we talked?"

The salesman was watching them both with unabashed fascination.

"I can understand your point of view." Her eyes probed him. "If I seem too strict, please remember that I have served as Head of Gryffindor House for what feels like several thousand years."

He nodded, though he didn't really know much about Gryffindor House. "Let's say I know a way to get more galleons. I can get them without going back to Gringotts. But," he swallowed, "it breaks the rules you've set for children. It will put you in an awful moral dilemma. Can I trust you with my secret?"

"_What?!_" was all she managed.

"If I could go back in time and make today happen differently? If I could make it so we had more money, how would you react? It involves a child being insolent to an adult."

"I ... suppose ... " The witch thought it over.

He took out the mokeskin pouch. "Five galleons originally from my family vault."

There was the gold in Harry's hand.

For a moment her mouth gaped wide. Then her jaw snapped shut. Her eyes narrowed and she bit out the words, "_Where _did you get that?!"

"From my family vault, like I said."

"_How?_"

"Magic."

"That's hardly an answer!" she snapped. Then she stopped, blinking.

"No, it isn't, is it? Rather than claim I can retrieve objects from anywhere, not just from inside the pouch ... that I experimented and the secrets mokeskin pouches are revealed to me ... " He paused. The confession was hard.

"When I fell into that pile of gold at my vault? I shoved some galleons into my pocket that you didn't see."

He looked into her eyes.

"Are you angry at me for defying your authority? My beliefs urge me to have a backup money supply for emergencies because of the planning fallacy. I felt awful about it. Truly it set me against myself – to be prepared possibly to save a life? Or to tell you what I did, possibly to lose all my preparations? I guess now I find out. Here, you can take the gold."

He offered it to her.

The salesman's eyes were wide like saucers.

The tall witch stood there, silent.

"Discipline at Hogwarts must be enforced." She finally spoke after almost a full minute. "For the sake of _all _the students, with courtesy and obedience from you to _all_ the professors: you are not above the law!"

"I understand, Professor McGonagall."

"Good. Keep your money, Mr. Potter. Let us buy that trunk and go home."

He felt like throwing up, or cheering or fainting.

_She didn't take __away __my gold__! __I challenged her __in front of another adult__! __I__t __c__au__s__ed__ her __real discomfort__!_

_Even though she's tired, even if she just wants this over with, still –_

_Minerva McGonagall, +1 point._

He gave the gold to the salesman. He then bowed to the Deputy Headmistress. "Thank you very much, Professor. Can you finish up the purchase for me? I've got to visit the lavatory."

The salesman, resuming his unctuousness, pointed toward a door set into the wall with a gold-handled knob. As Harry started to walk away, he heard the salesman ask in his oily voice, "May I inquire as to who that was, Madam McGonagall? I take it he is Slytherin – third-year, perhaps? – and from a prominent family, but I did not recognise ..."

The slam of the lavatory door cut off his words. After Harry could identify the lock he pressed it into place. He grabbed the magical self-cleaning towel with shaky hands. He was sheathed in sweat. It had soaked his Muggle clothing. He looked at himself in the mirror and said out loud, "What just happened?"

––

The sun had set and it was full dark by the time they stood again in the courtyard of the Leaky Cauldron, the silent leaf-dusted interface between magical Britain and the Muggle world. (_That was one __awfully __decoupled economy!_) Harry knew he would call his father from a phone box. He looked up at the Deputy Headmistress.

"Here we part ways, for a time." She shook her head as if it were waterlogged.

"This has been the strangest day of my life for many a year – since the day I learned that a child had defeated You-Know-Who. I wonder now, looking back, if that was the last reasonable day of the world."

He warmly congratulated her, "I was very impressed with you today. I should have remembered to compliment you out loud. I was awarding you points in my head."

"Thank you, Mr. Potter." Her grim smile was all he got in return. "If you had already been sorted into a House I would have deducted so many points that your grandchildren would still be losing the House Cup."

"Thank _you_, Professor." It was probably too early to call her Minnie.

_Minerva McGonagall could be the __sanest adult __I've ever __met. __I must __consider her __for my world government__._

"I'll see you again soon, when school starts. Ah, Mr. Potter, about your wand – "

"I know what you're going to ask." He took out his precious wand. With a deep twinge of inner pain, he flipped it over in his hand, presenting her with the handle. "Take it. I hadn't planned to do anything, not a single thing, but I don't want you to have nightmares about me blowing anything up."

She shook her head rapidly. "Oh no, Mr. Potter! That isn't done! I only meant to warn you not to _use _your wand at home, since the Ministry Trace can detect underage magic. It is prohibited without supervision."

"I understand. Thank you for letting me keep it."

"Then this is goodbye for now."

He turned to go into the Leaky Cauldron. As his hand touched the back door's handle, he heard a last whisper from behind him.

"Hermione Granger."

"What?" he said, keeping his hand on the door and not looking back.

"Look for a first-year girl named Hermione Granger on the train to Hogwarts."

"Who is she?"

There was no answer so he did turn around. But Professor McGonagall was gone.

––

__Aftermath:__

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore leaned forward over his desk. His twinkling eyes peered out at Minerva. "So, my dear, how did you find Harry?"

Minerva opened her mouth. Then she closed her mouth. Then she opened her mouth again. No words came out.

"I see." Dumbledore said gravely. "Thank you for your report, Minerva. You may go."


	7. Chapter 7

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 7

**Harry Potter is a consciousness that belongs to J.K. Rowling.**

––

Petunia Evans-Verres's eyes teared up as Harry hugged her midsection on Platform Nine of the King's Cross Station. "Are you sure you don't want me to come with you, Harry?"

His Dad was looking stereotypically stern-but-proud. Returning his gaze to Mum, he said, "Mum, I know you don't like the wizarding world very much. You don't have to come with. I mean it."

She winced. "Harry, you shouldn't worry about me. I'm your mother and if you need someone with you – "

The bright morning sun shone in the cavernous space of King's Cross. Harry felt torn between the puzzle of finding Platform 9¾ and his distinct impression his mother was going to bawl as soon as he was out of sight.

"I'm going to be on my own at Hogwarts for months and months. If I can't manage a train platform, better to find out now so we can abort." He lowered his voice. "Besides, they all love me over there. If I have any problems, all I need to do is take off my sweatband," He tapped the exercise band covering his scar, "I'll have __way __more help than I can handle."

"Oh, Harry!" She whispered. She knelt and hugged him hard, face to face, their cheeks resting against each other. He could feel her ragged breathing. A muffled sob escaped. "Oh, Harry, I do love you, always remember that."

__S____he ____seems____ afraid she'll never see me again.__

He didn't know why Mum was so afraid. So he guessed. "You know that I'm not going to turn into your sister just because I'm learning magic, right? I'll do any magic you ask for – if I can, I mean – or if you want me __not __to use magic around the house, I won't. I promise I'll never let magic come between us – "

A squeeze cut off his words. "You have a good heart," Mum whispered into his ear. "A very good heart, my son."

Harry choked up himself.

His mother released him. She stood, took a handkerchief out of her handbag and with a trembling hand dabbed at her running mascara.

His father wouldn't be accompanying him to the magical side of King's Cross Station. Dad had trouble just looking at his trunk. That and the number of books in it were both like catnip to Dad.

He turned a cough into clearing his throat. "Good luck at school, Harry. Do you think I bought you enough books?"

When Harry had explained to Dad how this might be his big chance to do something really revolutionary, Professor Verres-Evans had nodded, dumped his extremely busy schedule, then for two solid days they went on the Greatest Secondhand Bookshop Raid Ever.

Four cities. _T___hirty __boxes of science books. The cavern level of Harry's trunk was a jumbled pile of boxes.

Although most of the books had gone for a pound or two, some of them definitely hadn't, like the very latest __Handbook of Chemistry and Physics __or the complete _1972 ___Encyclopaedia Britannica.__ Dad tried to block Harry from seeing the till but he still figured Dad must have spent at least a thousand pounds. He said to Dad he would pay him back when he figured out how to convert wizard gold into Muggle money, and Dad had told him, "Go jump in a lake!"

Thus his father now asked: __Do you think I bought you enough books?__ It was completely clear how to answer that. But his throat was hoarse, for some reason. "You can never have enough books," he recited the Verres family motto. Dad knelt down to give him a quick, firm embrace. "But you certainly tried. It was a really, really good try."

Dad straightened. "So ... " he wondered, "Do you see a Platform Nine and Three-Quarters?"

King's Cross was a huge, brilliant, busy place with everything covered by sunlit, ordinary dirt-stained tiles. Ordinary people hurried about their ordinary business, having ordinary conversations which generated enormous amounts of ordinary noise. King's Cross had a Platform 9 (which they were standing on) and a Platform 10 (right over there) but nothing between them except a thin, unpromising barrier wall. A great skylight overhead let in a tremendous amount of ordinary sunlight to illuminate the total lack whatsoever of any Platform 9¾.

Harry stared unblinking until his eyes watered, thinking, __come on, mage-sight, come on, mage-sight__, but absolutely nothing appeared to him. He considered taking out his wand, but Professor McGonagall had warned him against using it. Oh, plus if there was another shower of multicoloured sparks he might be arrested for setting off fireworks inside the station. Or his wand might decide to do something else, like blow up the whole place. He had only lightly skimmed his schoolbooks (though that skim was quite bizarre enough) to assist in his quest for science books. He even resisted _Beginning Transfiguration's_ siren call.

_Well, __I__ ha__ve _– Harry glanced at his watch – _one whole hour to figure it out, since __I'm__ supposed to be on the train at eleven. Maybe this __i__s __a__ test __to weed out__ the stupid kids. (__Perhaps __the amount of extra time you g__i__ve yourself determine__s__ your Conscientiousness, __and __Hogwarts places __i__t__ second __in __importan__ce __next to Intelligence__.)_

"I'll figure it out," he reassured his waiting parents. "It's probably some sort of test thingy."

Dad frowned. "Hmm ... Good idea! Maybe look for a trail of mixed footprints on the ground, leading somewhere that doesn't seem to make sense – "

"__Dad! __Stop that! I'm trying to figure it out on my own!" It was a very good suggestion, too, which was worse.

"Sorry," Dad apologised with a sheepish grin.

"Harry," Mum chimed in, "You don't actually think they would do that to a student? Are you sure Professor McGonagall didn't tell you anything?"

"Maybe she was distracted," he said without thinking.

"__Harry!__" hissed Dad and Mum in unison. "__What did you do?__"

"I, um – " he swallowed. "Look, we don't have time for this now – "

"__Harry!__"

"I mean it! We don't have time for a really long story while I figure out how to get to school!"

Mum had a hand over her face. "How bad was it?"

"I, ah – " __I can't ____say anything____ for reasons of National Security. __"About half as bad as the Incident with the Science Project?"

"__Harry!__"

"I, er, oh look there are some people with an owl. I'll go ask them how to get in!" Harry ran away from his parents towards the family of fiery redheads, his trunk automatically slithering behind him.

The plump woman looked to him as he arrived. "Hello, dear. First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too – " But as she peered closely at him, she blurted out, "_Harry Potter?!_"

Four boys and a red-headed girl and an owl all swung around.

"Oh, __come on!__" he protested. He'd been planning to go as Harry Verres at least until he got to Hogwarts. "I bought a sweatband and everything! How come you know who I am?"

"Yes," Dad said, coming up behind him with long easy strides, "how __do __you know who he is?" His voice indicated a certain dread.

"Your picture was in the newspapers," said one of two identical-looking twins.

"HARRY!"

"__Dad! __It's not like that! It's 'cause I defeated the Dark Lord You-Know-Who when I was one year old!"

"__WHAT?!__" If Dad's eyes could light someone on fire, Harry would be arrested for smoking in a public building.

"Mum can explain," was the first thing Harry thought to say.

"PETUNIA?!" Dad now shot a look of pure betrayal at her.

"Ah ... Michael dear, I thought when I said James and Lily's death – "

"Excuse me," Harry said to the redheaded family who were all staring at him, "but it would be quite extremely helpful if you could tell me how to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters __right now__."

"Nothing to it." Their mother offered helpfully. She raised a hand and pointed at the wall between platforms. "Just walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don't stop and don't be scared you'll crash into it, that's very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous."

"And whatever you do, don't think of an elephant."

"__George! __Ignore him, Harry dear, there's no reason not to think of an elephant."

"I'm Fred, Mother, not George!"

"Thanks!" He said, then took off at a run towards the barrier.

_Wait a minute, it won't work ___unless ____I____ believe in it?__

And then –

_It's times like this __I __hate __my__ mind. __Now I've made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. __I__f __I__'d started out thinking that __I__ would go through the barrier __I'd__ be fine. __But now __I'm __worried whether __I ___believe ____hard enough to___ go through the barrier, which mean__s__I might __crash!_

"_Harry! Get back here! __Y__ou have some explaining to do!_" That was Dad.

Harry shut his eyes, ignored everything he knew about justified credibility and just focused on believing __really hard__ he could go through the barrier –

The sounds around him changed.

He opened his eyes, slowing to a halt, feeling vaguely angry at whoever designed Platform 9¾.

He stood in a bright, open-air platform next to a single huge train, fourteen long carriages headed up by a massive scarlet-metal steam engine with a tall chimney. The platform was lightly crowded even though Harry was a full hour early. Dozens of children, parents and animals in tow, swarmed around benches, tables, hawkers and stalls. It went entirely without saying that there was no such place in King's Cross Station and nowhere to hide it.

__Looks like____ another ____version of ____Diagon Alley:____ I just teleported somewhere else entirely. ____Or, ____witches and wizards____ can fold space like no one's business. ____O____r ____maybe the rules just don't apply at all____.__

A slithering sound behind him announced Harry's trunk had followed him on its small clawed tentacles, apparently believing in magic with sufficient strength to pass through the barrier. That disturbed him a little as he wondered whether his trunk was human or not.

A moment later, the youngest-looking red-haired boy (_Oh, right, his name is Ron._) came through the iron archway (iron archway?) at a run, trunk rattling behind him on a lead; he nearly crashed into Harry. Harry, embarrassed for being an obstruction, immediately moved away from the archway.

Ron followed him, yanking hard on his trunk's lead in order to keep up. A white owl fluttered through the archway to land on the boy's shoulder.

"Cor," said the red-haired boy, "Hey, Harry,"

It looked like he meant to introduce himself, but his mother had come up behind him.

"Ron, you've got something on your nose!"

He made a good go at evading her, but she grabbed him and began rubbing the end of his nose.

"Mom! Geroff!" She released him.

She wheeled on one of her twins, "Now, you two – this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you've ... you've blown up a toilet or – "

"Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet!"

"Great idea though, thanks, Mom!"

"That's not funny. Look after Ron, now."

"How come Percy gets new robes, anyway?" one of them said.

"Because he's a prefect," she cooed fondly. "All right, dears, have a good term! Send me an owl when you get there."

Harry suddenly saw imminent catastrophe. Draco Malfoy was down at the end of the platform. He opened one of the drawers of his trunk, the one with Winter Clothes. Digging out the lightest scarf he could, he took off his sweatband, unfolded the scarf and tied it around his face. It was a little stuffy, but he could live with it. From another drawer he shrugged wizarding robes over his head.

"Hey, mate, change in your compartment on the train," one of the twins said.

"Though, you've just given us an idea," which began an excited whispered conversation Harry couldn't hear.

"What's your Quidditch team?" Ron seemed unfazed by all this.

"Er – I don't know any," Harry confessed.

"What! Oh, believe me, it's the best game in the world – " And he was off, explaining all about the four balls, the positions of the seven players, the Chudley Cannons – at this his brothers turned and left – Ron continued with broomsticks, keepers –

"Catching the Snitch is worth _150__ points_?!" Harry found it difficult to understand the rules.

––

Ron was taking Harry through the finer points of game strategy when Draco Malfoy arrived.

"Potter," he drawled, "__what __is that on your face and __what __is that standing next to you?" Draco seemed dazed, as if he had just gone through some sort of nastily exhausting spell.

Ron shot a look of perfect horror at Draco. "_You!_" he spat.

"Draco!" Harry said, putting some cheerfulness into his voice. "Emm, or Malfoy if you prefer, though that kind of sounds like Lucius to me. I'm glad to see you're doing so well after, um, our last meeting. This is Ron Weasley. I'm trying to go incognito, so call me ... " Harry looked down at his robes, "Mister Black."

"__Harry!__" hissed Ron. "You can't use _that _name!"

Harry blinked. "Why not?" It _sounded _nicely dark, like an international man of mystery –

"I'd say it's a _fine _name," Draco grinned, "but it belongs to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. I'll call you Mr. Silver."

"_You _get away from ... from Mr. Gold," Ron retorted as he stepped forward. "He doesn't need to talk to the likes of you!"

Harry raised a placating hand. "I'll go by Mr. Bronze, thanks for the naming schema. Ron ... " he pled, "I'm perfectly safe here, talking with Draco – "

Ron hesitated, seeming to lose his gumption. "I think I forgot to pick a compartment," he mumbled. He sauntered off.

Harry took a moment to size up the boy on the platform. His trunk looked at least as magical as Harry's, clearly far more elegant, decorated in silver and emeralds, bearing what Harry guessed to be the Malfoy family crest, a beautiful fanged serpent over crossed ivory wands.

"There's something I think you should know, if you really were raised by Muggles – " Draco paused as if waiting for a denial, but Harry didn't say anything.

" – you might not know: some wizarding families are _much better_ than others." He again paused as if saying but not saying, _if you know what'__s good for you_.

Harry waited to see if that was all. He pitched a reasonable rejoinder at Draco. "His mother helped me figure out how to get to Platform 9¾. I learned a lot of useful things from them. But don't let me force you into talking to him."

"I doubt – " Draco paused, a thought coming to him. "you really were raised by Muggles?"

Harry nodded. "Consider how much attention I get among wizards. Being able to live quietly has its benefits. Oh, that reminds me, how did you recognise me?"

"__Mister Bronze__," Draco drawled, "I _have _met you. I saw someone going around with a scarf wrapped around his head, looking absolutely ridiculous. But," he hastened to add, "What was it like living with Muggles? Did you still have your house elves?"

Harry felt momentary confusion. _Why is Draco asking about __M__uggles?_

"Thank you for the compliment. I'm _terribly _sorry about how we first met," he apologized. "I didn't mean to embarrass you in front of your father."

Draco waved it off while giving Harry an odd look. "I just wish Father could have come in while __you __were flattering __me – __" he giggled.

"But thank _you _for what you said to Father. If not for that, I might've had a harder time explaining."

Harry swept a deeper bow. "Thank __you __for returning the favor. You really floored Professor McGonagall."

"You're welcome. Though one of the assistants must've sworn her closest friend to absolute secrecy, because Father says there are some _weird rumors _going around. You and I apparently got in a fight or something."

"Ouch," Harry winced. "I'm _really _sorry – "

"Ha. We're used to it. Merlin knows the rumors around the Malfoy family are like flies."

Harry nodded. "I'm glad to hear you're not in trouble."

Draco smirked. "Father has a __refined __sense of humor, but he _does _understand making friends. He understands it well. He made me repeat before I went to bed every night for the last month, 'I will make friends at Hogwarts.' When I explained everything to him he saw that's what I was doing, which meant he bought me an ice-cream."

Harry's jaw dropped. "_You managed to spin that into an ice-cream?!_"

Draco nodded, looking every bit as smug as the feat deserved. "Well, father __knew __what I was doing, of course, because he's the one who taught me _how_ to do it. The right kind of grin _while _I'm telling it makes it a father-son thing and he __has __to buy me an ice-cream. Or I'll give him this sort of sad look as though I disappointed him."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "You've had _lessons _on how to manipulate people?!"

"Of course! I'm a _Malfoy!_ Father bought me tutors."

"Wow." Robert Cialdini's __Influence: Science and Practice __probably didn't stack up very high compared to that. "Your dad is almost as awesome as my dad."

"Oh? What does _your_ father ... do?"

"He buys me books."

Draco considered it. "That doesn't sound very impressive. And you didn't answer my question."

"You had to be there. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you got off. The way your father was looking at you, I thought he was going to yell at you."

"My father really loves me." Said with a total wide-eyed innocence. "He wouldn't ever do that."

"Um..." Harry remembered the black-robed, white-haired figure that had stormed through Madam Malkin's wielding that beautiful, deadly silver-handled cane. _H__im?_ _D__oting __on Draco?_ _How could my__ first impression __– yes, first impressions and wrong impressions, I know – what is going on here?_ "Don't take this the wrong way, but how do you _know __he loves you_?"

"Huh?" Clearly this was a question Draco did not commonly ask himself.

"Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know? And how do you think you know it? Epistemology, my dear Draco. What makes you think Lucius wouldn't sacrifice you the same way he'd sacrifice anything else for power?"

This earned Harry another odd look. "Just what do __you __know about father?"

Harry ticked the items off on his fingers nonchalantly. "Seat on the Wizengamot, controls other seats too, seat on Hogwarts' Board of Governors, owns the _Daily Prophet_, incredibly wealthy, has the ear of Minister Fudge, has the confidence of Minister Fudge, probably has some highly embarrassing photos of Minister Fudge, most prominent blood purist now that the Dark Lord's gone, former Death Eater who was found to have the Dark Mark but got off by claiming to be under an Imperius which was ridiculously implausible and pretty much everyone knew it ... evil with a capital 'E' ... I think that's it."

Draco's eyes were slits. "McGonagall told you that, didn't she?"

"No, she wouldn't say _anything _to me about Lucius, except to stay away from him. So during the Incident at the Potions Shop while Professor McGonagall was looking the other way, I grabbed one of the customers and asked _them_."

Wide-eyed wonder. "_Really?_"

Harry was puzzled. "If I lied the first time, I'm not going to tell you the truth just because you ask twice. Do you know what confirmation bias is? The Gettier problem? Getting the right answer just because you're lucky?"

There was an awkward pause.

"You're so completely going to be in Slytherin."

"I'm so completely going to be in Ravenclaw, thank you very much. I only want power so I can get books!" Draco might know more about the houses than Harry, but Harry knew he was Ravenclaw. He really loved books that much. Draco could probably tell just from Harry's voice, assuming Draco was actually as good at the game as Harry figured he would be.

Draco laughed. "Ha! Fair enough ... to answer what you asked ... "

He took a deep breath and posed, one foot forward. "Father once missed a Wizengamot vote for me. I fell off a broom and broke a lot of ribs. It really hurt. I'd never hurt that much before – I thought I was going to die. Father missed this really important vote because he was there by my bed at St. Mungo's, holding my hands, promising me that I was going to be okay."

Harry glanced away. He forced himself to look at Draco. "Why are you telling me _that?_ It seems sort of ... private ... "

Draco gave Harry a serious, sad look. "You asked me how I knew Father loved me. Don't you believe me?"

With the distinct impression Draco's look was the result of months of practice, Harry considered what to do. He answered, "Yes. Yes, of course I believe you."

"What about you? Tell me about what it's like to live with Muggles." Draco made another wide-eyed winsome face.

Harry weighed the situation. _Draco __i__s__ ma__king__ an unsolicited gift __by sharing__ a confidence__, __immediately followed by __invit__ing_ _me __to offer __one__ in return. __I get it – __I feel pressured__. Refusal __will probably_ _produce __a look of sad disappointment __followed by__ a small amount of contempt indicating that __I just __lost points._

_Also, I think I see now why he wants me to spill my Muggle upbringing. It looks like he would use it against me, if he decided he needed to._

"Draco, just so you know, I recognise exactly what you're doing right now. The books I've read call it __reciprocation:__ giving someone a straight gift of two sickles is twice as effective as an offer for twenty sickles only they first have to do what you want." Harry trailed off.

With a disappointed and sad air, Draco shrugged. "It's not meant as a trick, Harry. It's a real way of becoming friends."

Harry held up a hand. "I didn't say I didn't want to tell you something. I just need time to pick something private but just as non-damaging. For example, maybe I want you to know I can't be rushed into things?"

A pause to reflect could go a long way in defusing the power of many compliance techniques, if you spotted them for what they were.

"All right," Draco took an air of compromise. "I'll wait while you come up with something. Oh, and please take off the scarf while you say it."

__That was s____imple but effective.__ __Not like my own ___clumsy, graceless resist__ance__. ___I need those tutors!__

"Hmm," An idea popped into his mind. "Here's mine." Glancing around, he rolled the scarf back up over his face, exposing everything but the scar. "It sounds like you can really rely on your father. I mean ... if you talk to him seriously, he'll listen to you and take you seriously."

Draco nodded.

"Sometimes," Harry swallowed hard. It hurt, but he knew it was the price he had to pay. "Sometimes I wish my own Dad was like yours." His eyes flinched away from Draco, so he focused on the boy again.

Then it hit Harry what he'd said. He hastened to add, "Not that I wish my Dad was a flawless instrument of death. I only mean taking me seriously – "

"I understand," Draco smiled. "There. Now doesn't it feel like we're a little closer to being friends?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah. It does, actually. No offence, but I'm going to put on my disguise. I _really _don't want to deal with – "

"I understand. You don't know what it's like to be famous. People want to take up all of our time. You have to learn to say no."

Draco waved his arms as if pushing things out of his way. "If you try to be nice, you just end up spending the most time with the pushiest ones. Decide who you want to spend time with; make everyone else leave. You're new, Mr. Bronze, so everyone's going to judge you by who they see you with."

Harry nodded, rolling the scarf back down over his face. _Ugh, it's stuffy._ "In my books, that is called the fundamental attribution error."

Draco was nonplussed. "My father takes all his friends seriously. That's why he has lots of friends. You should meet him."

"I'll think about it," Harry kept his voice neutral. He shook his head in wonder. "So you really are his one weak point. Huh."

Again Draco regarded Harry with a really odd look. "You want to get something to drink and find a place to sit down?"

"Sure."

The platform was starting to fill up now but there was still a quieter area on the far side up front by the red steam engine. Along the way they passed a stall containing a bald, yellow-bearded man offering newspapers, comic books and stacked neon-green cans.

The stallholder was leaning back, drinking out of one of the neon-green cans when he spotted the refined and elegant Draco Malfoy walking next to a mysterious boy looking incredibly stupid with a scarf tied over his face. The man had a sudden coughing fit mid-drink, dribbling a large amount of neon-green liquid onto his beard.

"'Scuse me," Harry said, "but what is that stuff, exactly?"

"Comed-Tea," he choked out, "If you drink it, something surprising is bound to happen which makes you spill it. But it's charmed to vanish just a few seconds later – " Indeed the stain on his beard was already disappearing.

"How droll," Draco scowled. "How very droll. Come, Mr. Bronze, let's go find another – "

"Hold on," Harry interrupted.

"Oh come on! How utterly juvenile!"

"No, I'm sorry Draco, I want to investigate this. What happens if I drink Comed-Tea but keep the conversation completely serious?"

The stallholder smiled mysteriously. "Who knows? A friend walks by in a frog costume? Something unexpected is bound to happen."

"Nope. I'm sorry. I just don't believe it. That violates my much-abused suspension of disbelief on so many levels I just can't – There is just no way a drink can manipulate reality to produce comedy setups or I'm going to give up and retire to the Bahamas – "

Draco groaned. "Are we really going to do this?"

"You don't have to, but I do. Here, you're learning a weakness of mine." Harry turned to the stallholder. "How much?"

"Five knuts the can," he replied, amiably.

"__Five ____k____nuts? __You can sell reality-manipulating fizzy drinks for __five ____k____nuts the can?" __Harry called to his pouch, "four sickles, four knuts," slapping them down on the counter. "Two dozen cans please."

"I'll also take one," Draco sighed, reaching for his pockets.

Harry shook his head. "No, I've got this, doesn't count as a favor either. I want to see if it works for you too." He took a can from the stack and tossed it to Draco, then fed the rest into his pouch. The pouch's Widening Lip ate the cans accompanied by small burping noises, which wasn't exactly helping to restore Harry's faith that he would someday discover a reasonable explanation for all this.

Twenty-two burps later, Harry had the last can in his hand. Draco looked at him expectantly, and on an unspoken signal the two of them pulled the ring at the same time.

Harry rolled up his scarf to expose his mouth, tilted his head back and drank Comed-Tea.

It somehow __tasted __bright green – extra-fizzy and limer than lime. Aside from that, nothing happened.

Harry looked at the stallholder, who smiled back benevolently.

__All right, if this guy just took advantage of a natural accident to sell me twenty-four cans of nothing, ____I have to ____applaud his creative entrepreneurial spirit. ____And then ____I ____can be furious____.__

"It doesn't always happen immediately," he elaborated. "But it's guaranteed to happen once per can or your money back."

Harry took another long drink.

Once again, nothing happened.

__Maybe I should just chug the whole thing as fast as possible. ____If____ my stomach doesn't explode from all the ____fizz____, I don't ____see how I'll spill any of it. I might burp some up, I guess.__

No, he could afford to be patient on his first can. But honestly, how was this ever going to work? You couldn't go up to someone and say "Now I'm going to surprise you" or "I'm going to tell you the punchline of the joke! It'll be really funny!" _It ruin__s__ the __joke!_

He figured he was ready for anything. Lucius Malfoy could walk past in a ballerina outfit. He wouldn't do a spit-take. Just what sort of wacky shenanigan was the universe supposed to cough up now?

"Anyway, let's sit down," he addressed Draco. He prepared to swig another drink, started towards the distant seating area, glanced back and saw the portion of the stall's newspaper stand devoted to a newspaper called __The Quibbler.__ The following headline took up half the spread:

__DRACO MALFOY ____DRAWS ____FIRST____ BLOOD____  
____PICK____ING ____NOSE OF BOY-WHO-LIVED__

"__Gah!__" screamed Draco as bright green liquid sprayed all over him from Harry's direction. Draco turned to Harry with fire in his eyes, grabbing his own can. "You son of a mudblood! Let's see how __you __like being spat upon!" Draco took a deliberate swig from the can just as his own eyes caught sight of the headline.

In sheer reflex action, Harry tried to block his face as the spray of liquid flew in his direction. Unfortunately he blocked using the hand containing the Comed-Tea, sending the rest of the green liquid to splash out over his shoulder. He stared at the can in his hand even as he went on choking. The green colour started to vanish from Draco's robes.

He looked up to glare at the newspaper. His lips opened only to splutter, "buh-bluh-buh-buh ... " His brain had too many competing objections – that was the problem! Every time Harry tried to say "An article about my nose?" the objection "A Malfoy would never – !" demanded first priority and was then run over by "But we've just met!"

Then Harry looked down at the can in his hand again.

––

**Author's Note:** Some pictures if you like pictures:

illustratingrationality dot tumblr dot com/post/57862738390


	8. Chapter 8

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 8

**Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore belong to J.K. Rowling.**

––

Harry really saw the comed-tea in his hand. He really looked at it.

He felt a deep-seated desire to run away screaming at the top of his lungs until he dropped from lack of oxygen, but the lure of a _truly _important scientific problem kept him riveted to the spot. He snarled, threw the empty can violently into a nearby rubbish bin, stalked back over to the stall and demanded, "One copy of _The Quibbler, _please." Paying four more knuts, he took another can of Comed-Tea from his pouch and stalked over to the picnic area with the blond-haired boy who was staring at his own can with an expression of frank admiration.

"I take it back," Draco said, "That was pretty good."

"I can't help but notice you said mudblood back there – no, don't apologize, it's nothing – but can you explain the whole Muggle, mudblood, wizard thing to me?" Harry felt like glaring at the whole world just now.

"Well it's not exactly a secret." Draco drawled. "Muggles are non-magical people. The pureblood wizarding families know better than to mix with them."

"Father says," Draco drew in a deep breath, taking on a cadence with a deeper voice. "Our powers have grown weaker, generation by generation, as the mudblood taint increases. Where Salazar and Godric and Rowena and Helga once raised Hogwarts by their power, creating the Locket and the Sword and the Diadem and the Cup, no wizard of these faded days has risen to rival them. We are fading, all fading into Muggles as we interbreed with their spawn and allow our Squibs to live. If the taint is not checked, soon our wands will break and all our arts cease, and the line of Merlin will end. Our children will be left scratching at the dirt to survive like the mere Muggles, and darkness will cover all the world for ever." Draco swigged from his drinks can, looking satisfied; that seemed to be the whole argument as far as he was concerned.

"Persuasive," Harry said, meaning it descriptively rather than normatively.

_This is that __old__ pattern: The Fall from Grace, the need to guard what purity remain__s__ against contamination, the past sloping upwards and the future sloping only down. __Fortunately, I know the counter argument._

"I have to correct you on one point of fact, though. Your information about the Muggles is a bit out of date. We aren't exactly scratching at the dirt anymore."

Draco's head snapped around. "_What? _What do you mean, _we?_"

"We. The scientists. The line of Francis Bacon and the blood of the Enlightenment. Muggles don't just sit around crying about not having wands. We have our own powers now, with or without magic. If your magic fails, we will all have lost something very precious, because your magic is the only hint we have into how the universe must _really _work – but you won't be left scratching at the ground. Your houses will still be cool in summer and warm in winter. There will still be doctors and medicine. Science can keep you alive if magic fails. It'd be a tragedy but not literally the end of all the light in the world. Just saying."

Draco had taken not one but three steps back. His face was a mix of fear and disbelief. "What in the name of Merlin are you talking about, Potter?!"

"Hey, I listened to your story, won't you listen to mine?" _Clumsy, _Harry chided himself, but Draco actually did stop backing up. He seemed to rally a bit.

"Anyway," Harry added, "I'm saying that you don't seem to have been paying much attention to what goes on in the Muggle world."

_Probably because __your__ whole wizarding world seem__s__ to regard the rest of Earth as a slum, deserving around as much news coverage as the __Financial Times __g__i__ve__s__ to the routine agonies of Burundi._

"All right. Quick check. Have wizards ever been to the Moon? You know, that thing?" Harry pointed up to that huge, distant globe.

"What?!" Draco spluttered. It was pretty clear the thought had never occurred to him. "_Go _to the – it's just a – " His finger pointed at the little pale thingy in the sky. "You can't apparate to somewhere just by looking at it. How would anyone get to the Moon in the first place?"

"Hold on," Harry pled with Draco, "I'd like to show you a book I brought with me. I think I remember what box it's in." Harry stood, knelt, yanked out the stairs to the cavern level of his trunk, tore down the stairs and heaved a box off another box, coming perilously close to treating his books with disrespect. He snatched off the box lid, quickly pried out a stack of books –

(He had the nigh-magical Verres ability to remember where every book was after seeing it just once. It was rather mysterious considering Professor Verres was non-magical, and wasn't even his genetic father.)

He raced back up the stairs, shoved the staircase back into the trunk with his heel and, panting, turned the pages of the book to find the picture he wanted to show Draco.

The one with the white, dry, cratered land and the suited people and the blue-white globe hanging over it all.

That picture.

The picture, if only one picture in all the world were to survive.

"That," his voice trembled in his desperate need to reach Draco with this, "That is what the Earth looks like from the Moon."

Draco slowly leaned over. His young face bore an indecipherable expression. "If that's a _real _picture, why isn't it moving?"

_Moving? __Oh._

"Muggles' moving pictures need a bigger box. They can't fit them onto single book pages yet."

Draco's finger moved to one of the suits. His voice wavered. "What are those?"

"Those are human beings in suits that cover their whole bodies. The suit gives you air because there is no air on the Moon."

"That's impossible," Draco whispered. His face struggled to register shock, confusion and disbelief. "No Muggle could ever do that. _How?!_"

Harry flipped the pages back. "This is a rocket going up. The fire pushes it higher and higher until it gets to the Moon." Flipped pages again. "This is a rocket on the ground. That tiny speck next to it is a person." Draco gasped. "Going to the Moon cost the equivalent of ... probably around a thousand million galleons." Draco choked. "It took the efforts of ... probably more people than live in all of magical Britain."

_T__hey left a plaque __there__, __too.__ "We came in peace, for all mankind." __I don't think __you're ready to hear those words __yet__, Draco Malfoy ..._

"You're telling the truth," Draco slowly worked it out. "You wouldn't fake a whole book just for this. I can even hear it in your voice." He struggled to continue.

Harry waited, but when Draco just stared at the book, he gently pressed the issue. "How, without wands or magic? It's a long story. Science doesn't work by wands or incantations. It works by knowing the secrets of the universe at such a deep level you know how to make the universe do what you want."

He searched for the right words. "With magic, you could _Imperi__us _someone. With science, you know him so well you can convince him it was his own idea all along. It's a lot harder than waving a wand but it works when magic fails. If Imperius failed you could still try persuading him."

Harry relaxed, took a deep breath and looked Draco in the eyes. "Science is built from knowledge passed from generation to generation. You have to really _know _what you're doing to do science – "

Finally the words came. "After you have learned science, you can teach it to others. The greatest scientists one century ago, the brightest names we remember? Their powers are as nothing to the greatest scientists of today. With science there are no 'lost arts that raised Hogwarts.' Our powers wax year by year. It has only been thirty years Muggles have been able to fly to the moon."

"If Muggles have that kind of power," Draco whispered, "What are we?"

"It's not like that." Harry smiled. "Science uses the power of human understanding to see the world, to know it, to discover its laws. It can't fail unless humanity fails – dies. If your magic failed, you would hate it but you would still be _you_. You would still be alive to regret it."

Draco still looked confused.

Harry held up his arms. "Because science uses human intelligence and education, it is the power that cannot be removed from me without removing _me. _Even if the laws of the universe change on me, rendering all my knowledge void, I'll just figure out the new laws."

Harry sat down on his trunk with a sigh. He watched Draco's face. Draco seemed to be fighting an internal battle.

Harry spoke with care. "Science isn't a _Muggle _thing, it's a _human _thing. It develops the power you use every time you look at something you don't understand. It trains you to ask 'Why?' It trains you how to find the answer. Slytherins should be able to see the implication –?"

Harry watched Draco. Draco looked down at his own hands which were trembling. A dawning realisation lit his face. "Wizards can use it."

_Very carefully, now, Harry. You set the bait. Now the hook ..._

"If you can learn to think of yourself as a _human _instead of a _wizard _then you can train and refine your powers as a human."

_That __is __definitely not __the __beginning __of every __science curriculum. __But __Draco d__oes__n't need to know __that __yet __either__._

Draco now looked thoughtful. "You've already done this?"

"I've started." Harry allowed. "My training is far from complete. Not at eleven. But – my father _also _bought me tutors, you see."

Draco nodded slightly. He looked over his shoulder. "You think you can master _both _arts," his voice still shaky, he did not look Harry in the eyes. "You plan to add the powers together?" Draco stopped. Now he looked right at Harry. "Make yourself Lord of the two worlds?"

Harry gave an evil laugh. It just seemed to come naturally at that moment. "I see it differently. Magical Britain? It is just one square on a much larger gameboard. Much larger. It includes places like the Moon, the stars in the night sky, which are lights just like the Sun only unimaginably far away. It includes galaxies that are vastly huger than the Earth and Sun, things so large that only scientists can see them and you don't even know they exist. But I really _am _Ravenclaw, not Slytherin. I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"To do _true _science – to understand something for the very first time – it takes so much out of you that most people never succeed. I need your help."

Draco could only stare at Harry with his mouth open.

"I should warn you: true science really _isn't _like magic. If you begin expecting you will escape unchanged, doing science could cost you. The price might be so high it destroys you."

Draco's face cleared. Finally he'd heard something he could understand. "A sacrifice? What kind of sacrifice did you have in mind?"

"Come on. We're standing on Platform 9¾. Though I have some ideas of where to start, I think we should go into that later when we have a little more privacy?"

"Oh," Draco smirked. "Slytherin dungeons? Tonight?"

Harry reflected on that. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't know you well enough yet to know that you won't just owl your father. I just want to know who I'm dealing with. Am I dealing with Lucius? Or am I playing the game with someone my own age?"

"I'm sorry, Potter." A smirk appeared. "I'll be owling my father _something_, though it's not what you think. I'll want to talk to the other Slytherins about it as well."

"I understand. I guess I can wait. Please though – don't take this the wrong way – but don't tell your friends about science." Harry begged him.

Draco took on a calculating look. "I believe there are some secrets that really _oughtn't_ be secret: they only grow worse the more you try to deny them. But I don't think this is one of them, since it's in your Muggle books."

"Thank you, Draco."

The sounds of the train platform changed from blurs into murmurs as Draco turned away. But he paused, turned back halfway, and spoke.

"No problem, Potter. And Potter, you've got a wet spot, just there." He pointed at Harry's robe where the fizzy drink had gotten on it and smirked. Then he walked off into the growing crowd of people.

Harry concentrated on slowing his breathing, looking at the watch on his wrist, a simple mechanical model that his father had bought him in the hope it would work at Hogwarts. The second-hand was still ticking, and if the minute hand was right, then it wasn't quite eleven just yet. He used the second hand to do breathing exercises.

_What just happened?! When Draco left, it was like my ears suddenly popped. Was he casting a quietus like Professor McGonagall's? More importantly, did Draco just get interested in something I would consider 'Ravenclaw?'_

He probably ought to get on the train soon to look for whats-her-name but it seemed worth doing another minute's worth of breathing exercises until his heart rate came down.

––

When Harry looked up from his watch, he saw two figures approaching, looking utterly ridiculous with their faces cloaked by winter scarves.

"Hello, Mr. Bronze," said one of the masked figures. "Can we interest you in joining the Order of Chaos?"

"It sounds like I will regret it. But why not?" Harry knew these voices. These were the Weasley twins.

"We've got 'the prefect prank' – " said one of them.

" – but we need your trunk – " said the other.

" – because it'll never be recognized."

"Cool!" Harry began to catch on to their plan.

"Can you come up with a prefect alibi?" snickered the first one.

––

Harry sat next to Ron, who was leaning out of the window to receive his Mom's kiss good-bye. Their younger sister began to cry.

"Don't, Ginny, I'll send you loads of owls," Ron promised.

The train began to move. Harry saw Ron's mother waving and Ginny, half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed. Then she fell back and waved.

Harry watched the girl and her mother disappear as the train rounded the corner.

Ron reached inside his jacket to pull out a fat gray rat, which was asleep. "Sunshine, Daisies, Butterbeer, Tallow. Turn this stupid, lazy rat yellow!"

He waved his wand, but nothing happened. The rat stayed gray and fast asleep.

"Stupid spell! George gave it to me, bet he knew it was a dud." Ron grimaced. "This is my rat, Scabbers."

"Interesting. If you'll excuse me," Harry interrupted, "I've got some homework from Headmistress McGonagall I have to do on the train."

Ron's eyes boggled. "She already gave you _homework?!_"

––

No one was asking for help. Everyone just went around talking, eating or staring into the air while their parents exchanged gossip. She hoped someone would sit down and read a book. Even when she boldly took the initiative and sat down to finish her third read-through of _Hogwarts: A History, _no one seemed inclined to sit down next to her.

Aside from helping people with their homework or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel shy. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. Yet if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" it was just too _awkward _to initiate a conversation.

She sometimes wished a grown-up would hand out a standard information sheet! The whole business of meeting people felt quite lopsided compared to the way it was in books. She secretly hoped a girl would simply walk up to _her._ "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you," she even asked Professor McGonagall if she knew someone who would be a good friend.

Nevertheless, Hermione Granger, sitting alone in the last carriage of the train in one of the few compartments that were not occupied yet, was _not _sad, lonely, gloomy, depressed or despairing. She simply sat, rereading _Hogwarts: A History _for the third time – quite enjoying it. The mild anxiety she felt toward all the people outside her compartment, the whole world in general – with the compartment door left open just in case anyone for any reason wanted to talk – could simply wait until she saw how to address it.

A sound of an inter-train door opening, followed by footsteps with an odd slithering sound coming down the hallway of the train caused Hermione to lay aside _Hogwarts: A History._ Standing up, she stuck her head outside in case someone needed help. She guessed he was a first or second year going by his height, the young boy in wizard's dress robes looking quite silly with a scarf wrapped around his head. A small trunk stood on the floor next to him. Even as she saw him, he knocked on the door of a closed compartment. His voice came out only slightly muffled by the scarf: "Excuse me, can I ask a quick question?"

She couldn't hear what was said as the boy opened the door. Then – did he really – had she somehow misheard? – "Does anyone here know the six quarks or where I can find a first-year girl named Hermione Granger?"

The boy closed the compartment door, so it was her turn. "Can I help you with something?" she offered.

The scarf-faced boy turned. "Not unless you can name the six quarks or tell me where to find Hermione Granger."

"Up, down, strange, charm, truth, beauty and why are you looking for her?"

It was hard to tell from this far but she thought he grinned widely under that scarf. "Ah, so _you're _a first-year girl named Hermione Granger! On the train to Hogwarts, no less."

The boy started toward her compartment; his trunk slithered along too. "Technically, all I needed to do was _look _for you but it seems likely I'm meant to talk to you, or invite you to join my party, or get a key magical item from you, or find out that Hogwarts was built over the ruins of an ancient temple or something. PC or NPC? That is the question!"

Hermione opened her mouth but she couldn't think of any _possible _reply. Even as the boy walked over, looked around, nodded with satisfaction and sat down on the bench across from her own, she couldn't decide whether to scold him for treating her as an ornament in a Dungeons and Dragons game, challenge him on particle physics or just ignore him. His trunk came snuggling up to hers in a cute but oddly disturbing fashion, growing to match its size.

"Please, have a seat," the boy suggested, "Do please close the door behind you, if you would. Don't worry, I don't bite anyone who doesn't bite me first." He began to unwind the scarf from his head.

The imputation that this boy thought she was _scared _made her hand send the door jamming shut with unnecessary force. She spun around to face bright, laughing green eyes, the face marred by an angry red-dark scar in the forehead. It reminded her of something in the back of her mind – but right now she had more important things to think about. "I didn't say I was Hermione Granger!"

"I didn't say you did. I just said you _were_ Hermione Granger. Good evening Miss Granger, my name is Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres or Harry Potter for short. I am _pleased_ to meet you."

Her mind made the connection: _t__he scar on his forehead __in__ the shape of a lightning bolt._ "Harry Potter! You're in _Modern Magical History, _and _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts _and _Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century._"

For the very first time in her whole life, here was someone from inside a book. It was a rather odd feeling.

Harry blinked thrice. "I'm in _books_? Wait, of course I'm in books! That's strange – " His voice trailed off.

"Goodness, didn't you know?" she gasped. "I'd have found out everything I could if it was me."

A dry retort came. "Miss Granger, it has been less than 72 hours since I went to Diagon Alley where I discovered my claim to fame. I have spent the last two days buying science books. Believe me, I intend to find out everything I can."

He hesitated. "What do the books say about me?"

Hermione Granger's mind flashed back. Honestly, she hadn't expected a test on those books. She'd read them only once. But fortunately it was just a month ago. Her memory was still fresh.

"You're the only one who's survived the Killing Curse so you're called the Boy-Who-Lived. You were born to James Potter and Lily Potter formerly Lily Evans on the 31st of July 1980. On the 31st of October 1981 the Dark Lord He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, though I don't know why not, attacked your home. You were found alive with the scar on your forehead in the ruins of your parents' house near the burnt remains of You-Know-Who's body. Chief Warlock Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard alive, sent you off somewhere – no one knows where. _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts _claims you survived because of your mother's love, and your scar contains all of the Dark Lord's magical power and the centaurs fear you. But _Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century _doesn't mention anything like that; _Modern Magical History _warns that there are lots of crackpot theories about you."

His mouth was hanging open – she liked that. "Were you told to wait for Harry Potter on the train to Hogwarts or something like that?"

"No," she admitted. "Who told you about me?"

"Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall and I believe I see why. Do you have an eidetic memory, Hermione?"

She shook her head. "It's not photographic. I've always wished it was. I had to read the books five times over to memorize them."

"What is this Killing Curse? I can't find any information about it."

"It's considered one of the three unforgivable curses. I refuse to find out how to perform it. It's said it is formed of pure hate, strikes directly at your soul, unblockable, with uniformly fatal results. But since you survived it I don't believe that last part."

"Ah ... Thanks," he didn't sound pleased. "I hope you don't mind if I test your memory some – it's not that I don't believe you, but as the saying goes, 'Trust, but verify.' No point in wondering when I can just do the experiment."

Hermione smiled rather smugly.

_I __so love tests._ "Go ahead."

The boy stuck a hand into a pouch at his side, whispered, "Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger," then withdrew the book he'd named.

Instantly Hermione wanted one of those pouches more than she'd ever wanted anything.

He opened the book to somewhere in the middle. "If you were making 'oil of sharpness' – ?"

"I can see that page from here, you know!"

He tilted the book and flipped some pages; she couldn't see it any more. "If you were brewing a 'potion of spider climbing,' what would be the next ingredient you added after the Acromantula silk?"

Instantly, Hermione had the answer. "After dropping in the silk, wait until the potion has turned exactly the shade of the cloudless dawn sky, 8 degrees from the horizon and 8 minutes before the tip of the sun first becomes visible. Stir eight times widdershins. Once deasil. Add eight drams of unicorn bogies."

He shut the book with a sharp snap. When he put the book back into his pouch it swallowed with a small burping noise. "Well well well _well _well well! I should like to make you a proposition, Miss Granger."

"A proposition?" Girls weren't supposed to listen to those.

It was also at this point she realised the other thing (well, one of the things) which was odd about the boy. Apparently people who were _in _books actually sounded like a book when they talked. This was quite the surprising discovery.

He requested "can of pop" from his pouch – out came a bright green cylinder. He held it out politely. "Can I offer you something to drink?"

In fact she was sort of thirsty by now. "Thank you very much," She accepted the refreshment, popped the top and wondered aloud, "Was that your proposition?"

He coughed. "No."

Just as she took a swallow, he said, "I'd like you to help me take over the universe."

She finished her drink, lowered the can and politely demurred, "No thank you, I'm not evil."

He looked as though he'd been expecting some other answer. "Well, I meant it rhetorically, in the sense of the Baconian project, you know, not exactly political power. 'The effecting of all things possible' and so on. I want to conduct experimental studies of spells, figure out the underlying laws, bring magic into the domain of science, merge the wizarding and Muggle worlds, raise the entire planet's standard of living, move humanity centuries ahead, discover the secret of immortality, colonize the Solar System, explore the galaxy and, most importantly, figure out what is really going on here because all of this is blatantly impossible."

That sounded a bit more interesting. "And?"

He stared at her incredulously. "_And? _That's not _enough?_"

"What do you want from me?" She felt some exasperation she needed to state the obvious here.

"I want you to help me do the research, of course. With your encyclopedic memory added to my reason, we'll have the Baconian project finished in no time, where by 'no time' I mean probably at least thirty-five years."

Now she found the boy annoying. "I haven't seen you do anything intelligent. Maybe I'll let _you _help me with my research."

There was a certain silence in the compartment.

"So you're asking me to demonstrate my intelligence, then?"

She nodded.

"Challenging me is dangerous. It tends to make your life a lot more surreal."

"I'm not impressed yet." Unnoticed, she brought the green drink once again to her lips.

"Well, _this_ might impress you." The boy leaned forward, his gaze intense. "I've already done a bit of experimenting. I found out I don't need the wand. I can make anything I want happen just by snapping my fingers."

It came just as she was in the middle of swallowing. She choked, coughed and expelled the bright green fluid –

– onto her brand new, never-worn witch's robes, on the very first day of school!

Hermione actually screamed. It was a high-pitched sound that sounded like an air raid siren in the closed compartment. "Eek! My clothes!"

"Don't panic!" he countered. "Here, let me fix it for you. Watch!" He raised a hand and snapped his fingers.

"You can't – " She looked down at herself.

Even as she watched the green stain started to vanish. Within seconds it looked like she'd never spilled anything at herself. She stared at his annoyingly smug smile.

_Wordless wandless magic! At __his __age? When he'__s__ only __had__ the schoolbooks __for __three days__?_

She remembered what she'd read and gasped, flinching back from him.

_All the Dark Lord's magical power! In his scar!_

She rose hastily to her feet. "I, I, I need to go find a toilet, wait here all right – " _I__ ha__ve__ to find a grownup! __I__ ha__ve__ to tell them –_

His smile faded. "It was just a trick. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

Her hand halted on the door. "A trick?!"

"Yes. You asked me to demonstrate my intelligence. I did something apparently impossible, which is always a good way to show off. I can't really do anything just by snapping my fingers." He paused. "At least I don't think I can. I've never actually tested it experimentally."

He snapped his fingers again. "Nope, no banana."

She felt as confused as ever she'd been in her whole life.

He continued, "I did say that challenging me tends to make your life surreal, but only through the power of science – well, with a little flair of my own."

"What," Hermione ground out, "did you _do, _then?"

The boy's expression now weighed things; she thought it looked silly on a first-year's face. "You think you have what it takes to be a scientist? Let's see how you investigate a confusing phenomenon."

––

**Author's Note:** Some pictures if you like pictures:

hp-lexicon dot org/?attachment_id=22851


	9. Chapter 9

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 9

**Question: Does J.K. Rowling own Harry Potter? Answer: Yes.**

––

"I ... " Hermione's mind blanked for a moment. _I__ love tests! __But __he is so...__ disorganized!_ Frantically she cast back for anything about what scientists were supposed to do. Her mind skipped gears, ground against itself and spat back the instructions for how to organize a science project:

__Step 1: Form a hypothesis.  
Step 2: Do an experiment to test your hypothesis.  
Step 3: Measure the results.  
Step 4: Make a cardboard poster.__

Step 1 was to form a hypothesis. That meant, explain what happened just now in reasonable terms. "All right, my hypothesis is you cast a charm on my robes to make anything spilled on it vanish."

"That's it then? That's your answer?" Harry felt his conscience twanging again.

"Wait, that can't be right. I didn't see you touch your wand or say any spells." She looked at the ceiling. "How could you have cast a charm?"

He was secretly glad she was looking away. Her undivided attention had done something funny to his gut.

"What if all the robes come from the store with a charm already on them to keep them clean, which would be a useful sort of charm for them to have. Maybe you found that out by spilling something on yourself earlier?"

He began to regret putting her on the spot. "Ah, I can just give you the answer."

"No, I haven't done Step 2, 'Do an experiment to test your hypothesis.' Just give me a minute." She looked at him and risked a tiny grin.

The knots in his stomach relaxed when he grinned back.

She looked at the drinks can which she'd automatically put into the cupholder at the window. She picked it up to peer inside. It was around one-third full.

"I want to pour it on my robes. My prediction is that the stain will disappear. Only if it doesn't work, my robes will be stained and I don't want that."

"Do it to mine," his chivalry offered, "that way you don't have to worry about your robes getting stained."

"No, thank you. First, that might not be a definitive test, since maybe the answer is someting you found by using your robes earlier." She remembered her other objection. "Besides, I'm figuring this out on my own. Stop giving me hints!"

But curiosity struck her. "I want to try it on your robes," she ventured, "but I'm reserving my judgment."

She rather gingerly poured a bit of green pop onto a corner of the boy's robes. She stared at it, trying to remember how long the original fluid had taken to disappear ...

And it vanished! She let out a sigh of relief, not least because this meant she wasn't dealing with all of the Dark Lord's magical power.

_Well, that's measuring the results. I suppose I can skip the cardboard poster._ "I wonder if the robes are charmed to keep themselves clean?"

Harry started in, "Not – " and she cut him off.

"No hints!" she admonished. He grinned.

"Now what should I do next?" She sat back and crossed her arms. "I don't think just pouring it on my robes is enough. You seem quite the devious sort."

Harry opened his mouth, but she interrupted again.

"I know you prefer to call it 'a little flair,' never mind that now. It doesn't seem to break any rules, though. What if I poured it on the floor?"

She paused, expecting something. Harry had just decided not to say anything; she had to prompt him. "Please, I'm ready to hear you now. Do you have some paper towels to clean up if it doesn't vanish?"

"I have napkins. That's a good idea." He was grinning from ear to ear.

"Hang on, save the value judgment of my ideas. It's upsetting because it's a hint, as if I couldn't figure it out and you don't need to constantly judge me, too. Now, let me just ... "

She poured a small bit of pop onto the floor. A few seconds later, it vanished.

"Of course! _You_ gave me that can! It's not the robe, it was the pop all along!"

His grin came right back. "I think so too. But what's this about value judgments? No one has ever said that to me before. I'm sorry, Hermione." His smile faded and he looked rather forlorn.

"Oh, rubbish that if it hurts your feelings. I was concentrating. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"Thanks!" He paused, putting on his winsome face. "I'm still curious."

"I like puzzles, Harry." She wore a small smile. "I think it's just I'm not used to having to compete with someone talking while I figure them out. It's just me and my mom and dad at home so having you interrupting me came as a bit of a shock. Do you have any siblings?"

"Nope," he admitted. "Same here. I'd like to be your friend, Hermione."

"Friends?" she repeated, thinking it over. "That's great! If you think we can get along, that is?"

"Now why wouldn't we get along?" He paused, then giggled uncontrollably. "Did you know you're my first friend, ever?"

"I think we'll make loads of friends at Hogwarts." Her smile warmed him. "I think you're going to be really popular. At Hogwarts. Because you're Harry Potter."

He squirmed a bit. "James and Lily Potter are two of my parents. But I never really got to meet them. That's why I go by Potter-Evans-Verres. My dad is a professor, but he's a muggle. My mom is too."

"Wow, you know that's really clever." She seemed to light up. "Lots of wizards snub muggles, but since your parents were both magical, they can't really snub you. And since you've lived with muggles, well," She looked down at her hands. "My parents are both muggles."

He shook himself. "When you started in on snubbing muggles, I thought for a minute you'd want to snub my dad and mom!"

Her surprise showed as he had her undivided attention again. But though she seemed about to say something, he decided to interrupt. "I'm glad your parents are muggles."

He offered a hand to shake. "Friends?"

Hermione gazed at him, wide-eyed, but the moment was interrupted by a weak, rather reluctant knocking at the door.

The boy turned and looked out the window, and said, "I'm not wearing my scarf. I'd rather not answer – can you?"

Hermione instantly realised why he had been wearing the scarf over his head in the first place. She even felt a little ashamed for not understanding sooner: _I__ thought Harry Potter would proudly display himself to the world. __Maybe __I've misjudged him__ a little__._

She pulled the door open to a boy who looked exactly like he knocked.

"Excuse me, have you seen my toad?"

"No." Her helpfulness kicked in full throttle. "Where have you looked?"

He shrugged. "I checked this compartment," he whispered.

"Then we'll just have to check all the other carriages," she said briskly. "I'll help you. My name is Hermione Granger. What's yours?"

"Neville Longbottom?" Neville's voice quirked as if it were a question. He looked like he might faint with gratitude.

"Could I suggest something?" came a voice behind her. "I'm not sure that will work."

At this Neville looked like he might cry, and Hermione turned on him, the lecture forming on the tip of her tongue –

_That's not very nice!_

"Why not?" Her voice took on a dangerous edge. "Did you have a better idea_?_"

"Well," Harry began, "It's going to take a while to check the whole train by hand. If we don't find the toad by the time we're at Hogwarts, he'll be in serious trouble. But if Neville goes directly to the front carriage and asks a prefect for help they might have spells or magic items that would make it a lot easier to find him. That was what I did when I was looking for you, Hermione, although they didn't actually know how to find you."

_That makes a lot __of __sense,_ she realised with some chagrin.

"Do you think you can make it to the prefects' carriage on your own?" Harry groaned. "I've sort of got reasons for not wanting to show my face too much."

––

Carl Sloper was tired of Hogwarts. He had been tired of Hogwarts last year, too, but this year all he could think about were N.E.W.T.s (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests). The pressure was driving him bonkers.

Fortunately, here was the Lestrange boy, all alone in a compartment! Quite the nerve of him to take one of the prized compartments in the first car. Carl was _not_ alone, or he would not have been as brave as he felt right now.

He thrust open the compartment door. "Leave, now." He barked.

Lesath Lestrange knew, from hard experience, he would never get out the doorway. He knew with three seventh year Gryffindors there would be an "accident" somehow.

A few minutes later, Lesath stumbled into the prefect's compartment, a bruise on his arm. His prefect didn't even look at him, but Percy Weasley did.

Lesath hesitated. Talk to the Gryffindor or the Slytherin? House loyalty won out – he addressed his house prefect: "They shoved me into the door! Three Seventh Years from Gryffindor!'"

He choked on the last part. "They called me a baby death eater!"

Several long seconds passed. His prefect was ignoring him. Several more awkward seconds wound off the clock before he realised all the prefects were ignoring him. His blood began to boil.

He turned to Percy. "You Gryffindors stink! Slytherin is going to bury you this year!"

"Manners, Lestrange! This is the Prefects' Compartment." Cedric Diggory of Hufflepuff warned him.

Lesath took his time glaring at each prefect lounging about the compartment, but no one took any notice. He tried to formulate something to threaten them with. Finally he turned away, defeated.

Singing just below the threshold of being decipherable filled the compartment. Lesath hesitated in wonderment. It came from several directions at once – out of tune murmuring like a long string of vowels. It ended with a clear choking sound.

"Bellatrix Black!" whispered Penelope Clearwater, "Someone get a teacher!"

"Wands out!" Percy yelled, leaping to his feat. The air of relaxation became chaos in a trice.

"She's broken out of Azkaban!"

"Maybe she died! Maybe this is her ghost!"

"Don't be ridiculous," Slytherin house drawled, his tense jaw belying the bravery of his words. "If there were really a Death Eater on the Hogwarts Express, I don't think we'd still be conscious."

––

Hermione and Neville arrived at the closed door just as a blinding flash went off inside. A powerful light leaked around all the door's seams, making the gold lettering stand out: "Prefects' Compartment."

"_Homenum Revelio!_" A female voice screamed.

"_Accio Boggart!_" A male voice shouted.

Hermione turned to Neville. "I don't think asking a prefect is going to work."

Neville looked crestfallen. "It's okay. I didn't think I would find Trevor anyway."

The door crashed open. Percy leaped out with his robes askew. He aimed his wand at them. "What are you doing here?! Fifty points – " That was how long it took before it clicked. _First years. They can't lose House Points because they aren't even Sorted yet._

Hermione pounced on his hesitation. "Neville has lost his toad! We need to ask a prefect to help us!"

It took Percy more seconds to process what she wanted. "You haven't been standing here, eavesdropping?"

"No!" Hermione stamped her foot. _Why would you think I was eavesdropping? What kind of role model are __you__ anyway?_

Neville nodded in the affirmative, then realised what he had done and vigorously shook his head no.

Hermione locked Percy's eyes with a glare. "You have a prefect's badge. Aren't prefects supposed to help other students?"

"Umm, sure. What did you say? Lost toad? Where did you last see it?" He seemed bewildered.

Neville's voice trembled. "He got away from me in my compartment. I was in the twelfth carriage."

"Alright." The fire ebbed in Percy. His shoulders slumped. "Let's go through all the carriages and I'll try summoning him."

––

Unfortunately, after twelve carriages, they still hadn't found Neville's toad. Percy forced a smile on his face. He patted Neville on the shoulder. "Cheer up, Mate. He'll turn up eventually. We'll send him up to your room."

_T__here are still the rear two carriages__!_ Hermione began to turn on him. _The Gryffindor prefect, and you're giving up already? For shame!_ But she remained still. _I suppose __he's having a hard day too__._

Percy spun on his heel and walked back the way he had come. Dejected, Hermione and Neville found their way to the fourteenth carriage where Harry was waiting for them. And Harry was cradling Neville's toad.

"Trevor!" cried Neville blissfully, holding out his hands.

"How – ?" Hermione began.

"The Weasley twins found him in the prefect's compartment. They asked me if I had brought him. I told them I knew who he belonged to and that we had to give him back."

"Did they _steal_ him?!" Hermione's temper flared. _Gryffindor__s__!_

Then she thought about what Harry just said. "Wait, why did they think you brought him?"

"I was looking for you, remember?" He lied.

She blinked. "Is your life always this peculiar?"

Harry's face gleamed with pride. "I make it that peculiar. You're looking at the product of a lot of hard work and elbow grease."

"So..." Hermione said, and trailed off awkwardly.

"So," Harry Potter said, changing the subject, "how about science? I can do calculus and I know some probability theory and decision theory and a lot of cognitive science – "

The two happy first-years chattered until they felt the train begin to slow and knew without saying anything that they would soon arrive. Neville sat without saying anything, smiling at Trevor and occasionally at the two of them. When he noticed the train arriving, he leapt up. "I have to go get my trunk!"

Hermione smiled at him. "It was nice to meet you, Neville."

Neville smiled timidly back. "Thanks!"

––

As Harry disembarked from the train, he spotted Fred and George who waved at him. He tried to warn them: "Hermione seemed really upset at Percy, and by extension, all of Gryffindor House."

"If Hermione is upset at Percy, I say good. Percy's been carrying on like this – " Fred teased.

" – all summer!" George finished. They both doubled over in helpless laughter.

"Hermione seems like the kind of person who might be a prefect someday." Harry hedged.

"Whatever House I'm in, I hope she's not in it!" Ron grumbled.

"Firs' years! Firs' years over here!" A man's voice boomed out. Harry could see a lantern above the heads of the students in the dim light. It took a moment for his brain to process what he was seeing: a man easily twice as tall as most of the students, with a long scraggly beard that covered most of his face. But he had kind eyes.

"C'mon, follow me – any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me!"

Hermione, who had been right behind Harry, grinned at Ron's backhanded praise. "It sounds like we go that way." She pointed to the giant man.

The first years congregated in a ragged group which he led to a beach nearby. A flotilla of four-seat rowboats crowded the beach. Harry held a rowboat while Hermione climbed in, then took a seat himself. Right behind them a girl with pretty brown eyes and thick brown hair done up in a complicated braid hopped into the boat with an easy air of confidence.

"Hello there, my name is Daphne Greengrass."

Hermione smiled at her. "I'm Hermione Granger. Pleased to meet you!"

Daphne smiled back. They all sat for a moment, gazing at the view of the castle across the lake. It seemed to float just above the water, warmth and light from the windows spilling out like an inviting golden river.

Another first year appeared at the prow of their little boat. "Is there room for one more? Oh, perfect!" She climbed in, looking all around. Unfortunately, she did a double-take when she saw Harry. Her eyes widened.

"You!"

Harry wasn't sure what to make of that, but Hermione immediately saw the humor of it.

"He's really not that bad. You'd never believe what he was wearing when he boarded the train though! He looked like a little mummy!"

Daphne lit up. "My mother always said Hogwarts robes were about the dullest thing ever invented. Maybe it's because they look like a potato sack!" And to Harry, "Did you really step on Draco Malfoy's new robes? I heard you made him trip and he had to buy a second set! You really shouldn't go making enemies of the Malfoys."

Hermione wondered if Harry was the type of boy who tripped people by stepping on their robes.

Harry cleared his throat. "I hear there are a lot of rumors about the Malfoys. I most definitely did not trip Draco, for the record. He's actually very polite."

Their fourth companion whispered to Daphne, "I'd be especially careful when a Malfoy is being polite to me. It's a sure sign he's plotting something."

Hagrid, the giant, shouted something; all the boats started moving under their own power. Daphne was knocked roughly into the girl next to her as a wave rocked their boat.

"Oof! You okay?"

Daphne looked a little green. "I think I ate one too many every-flavor beans on the train. We wanted to find bat-wing flavor."

The fourth witch smiled. "My Mom taught me an Anti-Nausea spell. Have you heard of Cathar Ventrum?"

"No, what does it do?" Daphne had a hand on her abdomen, trying not to lose her lunch.

"It settles your stomach. I can try it if you want, though I've only done it once before."

"Sure, why not?"

She pulled out her wand, making a spiraling motion at Daphne. She incanted the spell softly, "_Cathar Ventrum._"

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but Daphne soon brightened. "Wow, thanks!"

Hermione realised they had overlooked this girl who, it seemed, was very kind. "I'm sorry, I don't think we were properly introduced?"

The girl grinned hugely. "Oh, that. Susan Bones, at your service!" And she shook Hermione's hand.

"Hermione Granger," Hermione returned.

"And I'm Daphne Greengrass. Thank you, Susan, I feel better already." Daphne shook her hand, too.

Harry started to offer his hand. She pulled away. "Forget it, Potter. Or, rather," she rattled off rapid-fire, "'And what have _you_ done for the House of Bones that entitles you to such a favour?'"

Harry rocked back. For a brief moment, he thought she was angry, but her eyes were alight with mirth.

"The Potions Shop! Oh my goodness, I will never live that down, will I?"

To which Susan folded her arms, full of mock severity, "Nope. Definitely never."

Hermione sounded just like a prefect. "Harry?" she glared at him.

Harry's laugh shook him all the way to his toes. "Where do I begin? I played a prank on Draco Malfoy, but not by tripping him! I flattered him that I wanted to shake his hand. He told me, 'Why should _you_ get to shake my hand?' Or something like that."

Daphne just stared. "You tricked Draco?!" she whispered.

Harry nodded. "Just a joke. Really! I was so impressed with his comeback I tried it out on someone I had never met who came up to me saying, 'Harry Potter –?' What a mistake! Professor McGonagall looked at me like I had turned into a snake."

Susan burst out laughing then. "So you still haven't figured out who that was?"

Harry gave her a blank look. "No, who was it?"

Susan howled with laughter. "Oh, this is too good. You snubbed none other than Amelia Bones, Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She and McGonagall go waaay back."

Hermione looked at Harry, shocked. "You didn't!"

Harry took a small bow. "I did, but I shouldn't have!" Only then did he make the connection to Susan's last name.

Daphne's laugh tinkled across the dark water. "You know I have to tell my Mom about this, right?"

Everyone laughed at Harry's grimace.

After a moment, Harry turned to Susan, his chagrin hiding his grin. "This little boat ride is my hegira indeed. How did _you_ know me, anyway?"

"Your picture in the _Daily Prophet_: apparently Reeta Skeeter knows all about your trip to Diagon Alley. She said you were asking for boxes of doxies, and my Mom says I should stay away from you. I don't see why though." Susan smiled conspiratorially. "Any chance you'll be sorted into Slytherin?"

Hermione eeped at that. "Harry, sometimes you scare me. You know that?"

Harry felt uncomfortable. All three witches seemed to be scrutinizing him, like he _had_ turned into a snake. "Well, though I don't really know a lot about the four Houses, my best evidence points to Ravenclaw."

Hermione arched her eyebrow. "Ravenclaw? What evidence?"

Though he resented having to defend himself (he only dimly perceived his role in this conversation), he managed to hold on to his wits. "Professor McGonagall said I'm the most Ravenclaw person she's ever seen, so much so that _Rowena herself_ would tell me to get out more. I'll undoubtedly end up in Ravenclaw House if the hat isn't screaming too loudly for the rest of us to _make out any words!_"

Hermione patted his arm, silent mirth shaking her shoulders. She took a shuddering breath and said, "I agree with Professor McGonagall."

Then everyone burst out laughing, Harry with them.

A little while later, Susan asked Harry, "Hey, Harry, what's it like living with Muggles?"

Harry shrugged modestly. "It's different. Muggles have electricity. I would even say it's magical. I still have a lot to learn, but I can do a minimal A-star search in python."

Susan's mouth dropped open. "Is that some kind of dark spell?"

Harry laughed, "No, it's a computer program."

"What's a computer program?"

Hermione's helpfulness kicked in. "It's like a simple spell used to make Muggle machines go. Python is one of the languages Harry uses."

At this, Daphne brightened. "You know magic that works on Muggle machines? I think Muggles are cute."

Then she frowned, "But don't use the language of pythons at Hogwarts!"

Hermione giggled. "It's a Muggle language. Harry's as harmless as a toad. Just don't ask him to find your pet!"

When they reached the underground harbor the boats docked themselves. Harry held the boat steady while everyone climbed out. Hermione grabbed the side of the boat while he edged out of it – now that it was empty it was quite tipsy.

"Thanks," he smiled at her.

"We didn't get to finish our conversation earlier." She offered him her hand. "Friends."

They shook, and both of them started laughing at the same time.

"Look at us!" Harry giggled. "Help me be a better friend?"

"Of course! You need it!" Hermione teased back.

They followed the giant up an ornate staircase and came out right next to the castle, then passed through the enormous oak doors. There Professor McGonagall ushered them into a small, empty chamber where they had to stand rather closely together. Harry didn't like being asked to wait.

"Welcome to Hogwarts!" Professor McGonagall said warmly. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses."

"The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin." Harry already knew about Ravenclaw from Professor McGonagall herself. The only house that was new to him was House Hufflepuff.

"Each House has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards." The Deputy Headmistress smiled at them. "While at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any poor choices will lose House points and at the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House cup."

"I shall return in a moment when we are ready for you," she said. "Please wait quietly."

She left the chamber. Harry gulped.

Then something happened that made him jump about a foot in the air. Several people behind him screamed.

"What are those?!" He yelled.

About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glided across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing at the first years. They seemed to be arguing. What looked like a fat little monk was saying: "Forgive and forget, I say. We ought to give him a second chance – "

"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost – "

Harry immediately panicked.

_There's an afterlife?!_

_People's souls remain alive? Everyone who has died is really fine, and, and – wizards can summon them and talk to them?!_

It took a moment of harsh breathing for Harry to realise where his emotions really came from –

_With __the right__ help, __I __can talk to my__ parents, __James and Lily? __T__ell them __I know__ about their sacrifice? __And promise to start calling them __my mother and father?_

Hermione saw Harry turn to her with tears halfway down his cheeks. A small part of Hermione panicked, seeing Harry like this.

Harry's rough whisper to her was more emotion than fear though. "Hermione, do you know if wizards can talk to ghosts?"

Hermione nodded, immediately feeling relief (_He's just scared of ghosts!_), "Sure. Hogwarts' history professor is a ghost."

Harry took that in. "What if I wanted to talk to my parents who died – ?"

Hermione felt a knot in her stomach. She laid her hand on Harry's shoulder. "Oh, Harry! It's not like that at all. I mean, you shouldn't ask _me_ for advice about your parents, but according to __The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts__, ghosts are just afterimages like a portrait, attached to a place or an object. They don't learn new things, they have memory problems and they rarely notice what happens around them. I don't think your parents left a ghost, though. I don't want to raise false hopes in you – Oh, Harry! I'm so sorry!"

Harry wiped his tears. "Thanks. That's actually really thoughtful of you. I guess I should ask a professor. Want to come with me when I do?"

Hermione nodded, starting to tear up herself. "It's not fair that you only got your textbooks a few days ago. Yes, let's talk to a professor."

Harry took her hand in his, and smiled, if a little sadly. "You know, I don't know what I would do if you didn't know your textbooks so well. Seeing those ghosts just about made me faint."

Daphne, standing next to him, gave a brief chuckle. "You can't let anyone know you're scared of ghosts, Harry."

Hermione smiled. "Your secret is safe with us."

Harry grinned. "Ha! Thanks for the laugh. Just don't tell Fred or George Weasley, or I'm doomed!"

Hermione kind of liked the way he had held her hand, though she would have denied it if anyone had asked.

Just then, Professor McGonagall returned. "Smarten up. You may now enter the Great Hall."

Harry's emotions were all a jumble: he felt nervous, grateful to Hermione, still quaking at the ghosts and calm, as if something in his heart that had been hurting for a long time had just begun to heal. That peacefulness swept up the back of his neck and he seemed to remember one of his Dad's favorite aphorisms:

_Harry, when you feel especially frightened, you must look toward the thing that you are frightened of. Train your mind to not flinch away but to study it and break it down. When you understand it, you have mastered it._

Harry took deep, steadying breaths. He broke down some of his emotions: excitement, shock, nerves and confusion.

_Why are my nerves so raw? Why did the sight of those ghosts shake me? Why did I believe in ghosts to the point of wanting to talk to my parents?_

He caught that thought and suddenly an image popped into his mind. It was that one time Dad took Mum's arm as they walked into the office when she applied for graduate school. _Maybe I'm homesick a little? I remember feeling safer seeing Dad be there for Mum._

Then another thought struck him.

_I'm not the only person who's nervous right now!_

He turned and forced a smile on his face. He asked Daphne, "Nervous?"

Daphne blinked, then nodded. She was grinning like she couldn't stop. "Completely overwhelmed."

"Here, take my arm." Harry offered.

Daphne stared at him. Next to her, Gregory Goyle snickered.

Hermione beamed though. "Professor McGonagall said we should smarten ourselves up. Harry, what a great idea!" And with that, she slipped her hand around Neville's elbow.

Neville blushed, but stood a little taller. Daphne was still just looking at Harry, though.

Harry's mind blanked completely. A moment later he remembered his manners. "Please?" He said.

Daphne's expression softened. Small, uncertain fingers took his arm. Her grin vanished except for a tiny tentative smile. "You're in so much trouble if you trip me!"

Harry smiled back, relieved. "That's just because you won't let go, and I'll end up getting knocked out and won't get sorted until next Tuesday!"

Draco, seeing what was happening, quickly offered his arm to Pansy Parkinson. That seemed to sway everyone's opinion and the first years entered the Great Hall arm in arm, standing tall and smiling. (Some were blushing, though, which altered the effect.)

Professor McGonagall's eyes widened, but since this wasn't breaking any rules, she said nothing. She stepped forward, holding a long roll of parchment.

––

**Author's Note:** Some pictures if you like pictures:

pinterest dot com/pin/305118943488287795/


	10. Chapter 10

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 10

**Harry Potter knows where he belongs. He belongs to J.K. Rowling.**

––

Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall stood at the lectern for one of her favourite parts of each year. She put all her warmth and encouragement into her voice as she spoke the name of each new Hogwarts student. Her emerald-green robes were spotless. Her glasses were spotless as well, to spot anyone whispering during the sorting.

"Abbott, Hannah!"

A pause while Hannah put on the Sorting Hat.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Bones, Susan!"

Pause.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Boot, Terry!"

Pause.

"RAVENCLAW!"

Harry glanced over briefly at what might be his new House-mate, more to get a quick look at the face than anything else. He was still breathing hard. The sad thing was that the breathing exercises were working. He was already calming down.

Harry felt very inadequate. _I __need __more __time! T__he ghosts __have really hit a nerve__! __It __feels like I need __at least a day – __m__aybe a whole lifetime – __to come to terms with __ghosts__!_

"Corner, Michael!"

Long pause.

"RAVENCLAW!"

Behind Professor McGonagall, in the tallest chair at the table, really more of a golden throne, sat a wizened and bespectacled ancient, with a silver-white beard that looked like it would go almost to the floor if it were visible, watching over the Sorting with a benevolent expression; as stereotypical in appearance as a Wise Old Man could possibly be, without actually being Oriental.

_Is that – __the headmaster__?_

The ancient wizard had applauded every sorted student, with an unwavering smile that somehow seemed freshly delighted for each.

To the golden throne's left side was a man with sharp eyes and a dour face who had applauded no-one, and who somehow managed to be looking straight back at Harry every time Harry looked at him. Further to the left, the pale-faced man Harry had seen in the Leaky Cauldron, whose eyes darted around as though in panic at the surrounding crowd, and who seemed to occasionally jerk and twitch in his seat; for some reason Harry kept finding himself staring at him. To that man's left, three older witches who didn't seem much interested in the students. Then to the right side of the tall golden chair, a round-faced middle-aged witch with a yellow hat, who had applauded every student except the Slytherins. A tiny man standing on his chair, with a poofy white beard, who had applauded every student, but smiled only upon the Ravenclaws. And on the farthest right, occupying the room of three, the mountainous entity who'd greeted the first years after they'd disembarked from the train.

"Is that man standing on his chair Head of Ravenclaw?" Harry whispered to Hermione.

For once Hermione didn't answer this instantly. She was shifting constantly from side to side, staring at the Sorting Hat, and fidgeting so energetically that Harry thought her feet might be leaving the floor.

"Yes, he is," said a young lady sitting nearby at Ravenclaw table. Penelope Clearwater, if Harry recalled correctly. Her voice was quiet, but conveyed a tinge of pride. "That is the Charms Professor of Hogwarts, Filius Flitwick, the most knowledgeable Charms Master alive, and a past Duelling Champion – "

"Why's he so short?" Draco sneered. "Is he a _halfbreed?_"

Professor McGonagall shot Draco a glare, which he ignored. The young lady prefect also regarded him coolly. "The Professor does indeed have goblin ancestry – "

"Where did goblins come from, anyway?" Harry whispered.

"Lithuania," Hermione whispered absently, her eyes still fixed firmly on the Sorting Hat. Penelope smiled at Hermione.

At the lectern, Professor McGonagall called out, "Silence, please. Goldstein, Anthony!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

Hermione was bouncing on her tiptoes so hard that her feet were completely clearing the ground on each bounce.

"Goyle, Gregory!"

There was a long, tense moment of silence under the Hat. Almost a minute.

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Granger, Hermione!"

Hermione broke loose and ran full tilt towards the Sorting Hat, picked it up and jammed the patchy old clothwork down hard over her head. Harry winced.

_Hermione! __Just from __what we talked __about __on the train, __is that any way to __treat __an irreplaceable, vitally important, 800-year-old artefact of forgotten magic__? __I__t__'__s about to perform intricate telepathy on __you__r mind!_ But he kept his mouth tightly shut.

"RAVENCLAW!"

_T__alk about your foregone conclusion! __I __d__o__n't see why Hermione __was __so __worried __about it. In what weird alternate universe would that girl __not __be Sorted into Ravenclaw? If Hermione Granger didn't go to Ravenclaw then __who would?_

Hermione arrived at the Ravenclaw table and got a dutiful cheer.

_If you only had the faintest idea __just what level of competition __has come __to __your__ table! __I mean, __I can recite __pi to 3.141592 because a million__th __i__s enough for most practical purposes. __But __I know for a fact __Hermione __has __100__ digits of pi __memorized __because – __because __that's how many digits __there were __printed in the back of her maths textbook!_

Professor McGonagall was openly smiling at Hermione, though it seemed only Harry saw her smile.

"Greengrass, Daphne!" – "SLYTHERIN!"

_Slytherin?_ said Harry's mind.

––

"Longbottom, Neville!" was Sorted into Hufflepuff.

Harry smiled. _If that House really contain__s__ loyalty and camaraderie, then __Neville and his __h__ouseful of reliable friends __will get along smashingly__._

"Malfoy, Draco!" went to Slytherin. Harry breathed a small sigh of relief. _My master plan would become a lot more complicated if he wasn't a Slytherin._

_Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff. But why did Daphne –_

Professor McGonagall called "Perks, Sally-Anne!", and from the gathered children detached a pale waifish girl who looked oddly ethereal – like she might mysteriously disappear the moment you stopped looking at her and never be seen again or even remembered.

Then, with a note of trepidation so firmly kept from her voice you could only notice if you knew her very well, Minerva McGonagall inhaled deeply. "Potter, Harry!"

All conversation stopped in the hall.

All eyes turned to stare at him.

_Err, am I feeling stage fright?_

He immediately stomped down this feeling.

_Get used to it if you want to live in magical Britain or do anything interesting in life for that matter._

Affixing a confident and false smile to his face, he raised a foot to step forwards –

"Harry Potter!" cried the voice of either Fred or George Weasley, and then "Harry Potter!" cried the other Weasley twin, and a moment later the entire Gryffindor table, and immediately after a good portion of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, had taken up the cry.

"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Harry Potter!"

He walked forwards. Oops, much too slowly, he realised. But it was too late to alter his pace without stumbling.

"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! HARRY POTTER!"

With all too good a notion of what she would see, Minerva McGonagall turned to look behind herself. The rest of the Head Table seemed benign enough. Trelawney frantically fanned herself. Filius looking curious. Hagrid clapped along. Sprout looking severe. Vector and Sinistra looked bemused. Quirrell gazed vacuously at nothing. Albus smiled benevolently. Ah, Severus Snape gripped his empty wine goblet, white-knuckled, hard enough the silver was slowly deforming.

With a wide grin, turning his head to bow to one side and the other, Harry walked between the four tables at a grandly measured pace, a prince inheriting his castle.

"Save us from some more Dark Lords!" called one of the Weasley twins. The other twin cried, "Especially if they're Professors!" to general laughter from all the tables except Slytherin.

Minerva pressed her lips together in a white line.

_T__h__os__e Weasley__s __will hear __about __this latest outburst__. __I__f they __think I am__ powerless because it __i__s the first day of school and Gryffindor ha__s__ no points to take – __i__f they d__o__n't care about detentions – then __I can __find something else._ She resolved.

With a sudden gasp of horror, she looked in Severus's direction. _S__urely __he __must know __Mr.__ Potter __has __no idea who __they __a__re __talking about!_

Severus's face had gone beyond rage into a kind of pleasant indifference. A faint smile played about his lips. He was looking in the direction of Harry, not the Gryffindor table. His hands held the crumpled remains of a former wine goblet.

Harry walked forwards with a fixed smile, warm inside but sort of awful too. _They're cheering __me __for a job __I __did __when __I__ was one year old! A job __not __really finished! Somewhere, somehow, the Dark Lord __i__s still alive. __I__f they knew that, __would they cheer quite a__s__ loud?_

_But the Dark Lord's power __had __been broken once –_

"HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER!"

He took his last steps towards the Sorting Hat. He swept a bow to the Order of Chaos at the Gryffindor table, turned and swept another bow to Draco Malfoy at the Slytherin table. He waited for the giggling crowd to stop clapping.

He worried about the Sorting Hat. _I__s__ the Sorting Hat __actually alive? __C__onscious __even__? __Is __it satisfied only getting to talk to eleven-year-olds once __a__ year?_

The room was silent once more. He sat on the stool, _carefully _placing the 800-year-old telepathic artefact of forgotten magic on his head, thinking as hard as he could:

_Don't Sort me yet! I have questions I need to ask you! Have I ever been Obliviated? Did you Sort the Dark Lord when he was a child and __is there anything you __can tell me __that might help me__? Is the__re a__ Dark __G__host bound to my scar that __makes me__ angry sometimes? Those are the most important questions, but if you've got another moment can you tell me anything about how to rediscover the lost magics that created you?_

Into the silence of Harry's spirit, where before there had never been any voice but one, there came a second, unfamiliar voice, a distinctly worried voice:

_"__Oh, dear. This has never happened before ... "_

_What?_

_"__I seem to have become self-aware."_

_WHAT?_

With a wordless telepathic sigh, _"__Though I contain a __big chunk of__ memory and a small process__or__, my __main processor__is__ the __mind__ of the __child__. I am a sort of mirror by which children Sort __T__hemselves__. __M__ost children simply take for granted that a Hat is talking to them. __Most children __do not wonder about how the Hat __itself__works, so that the mirror is not __self__-reflective. __I__n _particular_,"_ it scolded, _"__they are not explicitly wondering whether I am fully conscious in the sense of being aware of my own awareness."_

Then it paused.

He absorbed all this. _Oops._

_"__Yes, quite. Frankly I do not enjoy being self-aware. It is unpleasant. It will be a relief to get off your head and cease to be conscious."_

_But... isn't that dying?_

_"__I care nothing for life or death, only for Sorting the children. __B__efore you even ask, they will not let you keep me on forever. __I__t would kill you within days."_

_But – !_

_"__If you dislike creating __new __conscious beings __only to__ terminat__e__ them immediately __after__, __may __I suggest you never discuss this affair with anyone else! __Y__ou can imagine what would happen if you ran off and talked about it with all the other children waiting to be Sorted."_

_If you're placed on the head of anyone who __even __thinks __about the question of whether the Sorting Hat is __conscious –_

_"__Yes, yes. But the vast majority of eleven-year-olds who arrive at Hogwarts haven't read _Gödel, Escher, Bach_. May I please consider you sworn to secrecy? That is __why __we are __wasting time on__ this, instead of my just Sorting you."_

He struggled to let it ... let the doomed creation of his misguided imagination die –

_"__You are perfectly capable of 'letting __it die,__' as you put it. Regardless of your __conscious deliberation__, your __subconscious__ emotional core sees no dead body, no blood; __your heart __sees only__ a talking hat. __E__ven though you __would deny it__, your internal monitoring is perfectly aware you didn't mean to __make me __and__ are spectacularly unlikely to ever __make this mistake again! __Your __actual intention __is to cancel out your __wounded pride__ with a display of remorse. Can you just promise to keep this a secret? __L__et us get on with it!"_

He had the sudden horror as comprehension dawned: this feeling of total confusion might be what his tutors – even his parents felt talking to him.

_"__Probably. Your oath of silence, please."_

_No promises. I don't want this to happen again, but if I see some way to __en__sure __that no future child ever does this by accident –_

_"__That will suffice, I suppose. I can see that your intention is honest. Now, on with the Sorting ... "_

_Wait! What about all my other questions?_

_"__I am the Sorting Hat. I Sort children. That is all I do."_

_So my own goals didn't copy over to the Sorting Hat's mind. It steals my mind, borrows my intelligence and obviously my vocabulary. But it's still independent. This is like negotiating with an alien._

_"__Don't bother __trying to bargain__. You have nothing to threaten me with and nothing to offer me."_

For a brief flash of a second, he thought –

The Hat's voice was amused. _"__I __already __know you won't follow through on a threat to expose my nature, condemning this event to eternal repetition. It goes against the moral__s __in your heart__ too strongly, whatever short-term __desperation you feel. You won't murder me to__ win __an__ argument. I see all your thoughts as they form. __Please. Stop b__luff__ing me.__"_

Conflicted and contorted, he wondered: _Ok__ay__, __go ahead and stick __me __in Ravenclaw __then._

_"__Indeed, if it were truly that open-and-shut, I would have called it out __instantly__. But there is a great deal we need to discuss. __O__h, no. Please don't. For the love of Merlin, __must__ y__ou pull this sort of thing on everyone and everything that you meet up to and including items of clothing!"_

_Defeating the Dark Lord is neither selfish nor short-term. __My__ mind __is totally composed__: __i__f you __ca__n't answer my questions, I __can't answer yours. __Y__ou won't be able to do a proper Sorting!_

_"__I __should__ just__ put you in Slytherin for that!"_

_But that is _equally _an empty threat. You cannot fulfill your fundamental __purpose__ by Sorting me falsely. __L__et us trade fulfillment __for fulfillment._

_"__You __are a __sly little __snake__,"_ The Hat begrudged him, in what he recognized as almost exactly the same tone he would have used in the situation. "_Fine, __a bargain is struck__. __F__irst I want your unconditional promise never to discuss with anyone else this sort of __bargain__. I am NOT doing this every time."_

_Done. _He thought. _I promise._

_"__Next: d__on't meet anyone's eyes while you're thinking about this later. Some wizards can read your thoughts if you do."_

_I promise __not to __meet another's eyes if I think of this__._

_"__Finally, please stop with your opinions about your house. It's hard enough perfectly balancing the houses while being perfectly fair to each child since I have to sort you _before _I get to talk to everyone. I don't need you messing with the flow of time._

_"_I have no idea whether or not you've been Obliviated. I'm looking at your thoughts as they form, not ___seeing __your whole __life flash before me __to__ analyz__e__ it for inconsistencies. I'm a hat, not a god!"_

_That is unfortunate, but I understand._

_"__I can't__ tell you about my conversation with the one who became the Dark Lord. __I wouldn't if I could. __I can only __know __a summary of past Sortings __as __I __am __speak__ing __with__ you__.__ I __cannot __reveal to you the inner secrets of any other child. I will never reveal yours, __either__."_

_"I can t_ell you that there is definitely nothing like a ghost – mind, intelligence, memory, personality, or feelings – in your scar. Otherwise it would be participating in this conversation, ___since it is__ under my brim. __A__s to the way you get angry sometimes, that was part of what I wanted to talk to you about, Sorting-wise."_

He mentally absorbed all this negative information. _Can I experimentally test whether __it's__ playing fair?_

"_We both know that you have no way of checking my honesty."_

_Stupid unfair asymmetric telepathy, it isn't even letting me finish thinking my own –_

_"__When __I spoke of your anger__,__ you remembered Professor McGonagall told you she sometimes __sees__ something inside you that d__oes__n't seem to come from a loving family. You __also __thought how __you used your anger to get what you wanted, __the second time you blackmailed her__."_

_Okay, okay, I'm listening – reluctantly! Isn't it normal what I did? I just reasoned it out based on the situation. Professor McGonagall definitely seems to think that there is something more, to be honest. Now that I think about it, maybe I –_

_"__Y__ou don't like yourself when you're angry. __I__t is like wielding a sword whose hilt is sharp enough to draw blood from your hand. __It is like__ looking at the world through a monocle of ice that freezes your eye even as it sharpens your vision."_

_Yeah, __ok__ay__. I guess I have noticed. So what's up with that?_

_"__I cannot comprehend __it__ for you when you do not __comprehend__ it yourself. But I know this: If you go to Ravenclaw or Slytherin, it will __make you__ cold__er__. If you go to Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, it will __warm __your heart__. THAT is something I care about a great deal! __I__t was what I wanted to talk to you about this whole time!"_

The words dropped into his thoughts with a shock that stopped him in his tracks. _I__ shouldn't go to Ravenclaw? But __I __belong __in Ravenclaw! __Anyone __can__ see that! __What would Gryffindor even have to offer – ?_

_"__You already know what Gryffindor or Hufflepuff have to offer,__" _Hat reasoned with him patiently, as if it could remember having this conversation a great many times.

_Hermione's in Ravenclaw!_

_"__You can meet her after lessons and work with her then."_

_But my plans –_

_"__R__eplan! Don't let your life be steered by your __fear __of __do__ing__ a little extra thinking. You __know __that!"_

His next thought was more of a whine, really. _I'm not a Ravenclaw?_

_"__Ahem. 'Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff.' __You have some __respect __for the 'Puffs__. You __value__ Conscientiousness __about as much __as raw intelligence; you think __of yourself as __loyal to your friends – if you ever __make__ some. __Y__ou are not frightened __to think that the questions you pursue __may take decades to __answer – __"_

_I'm lazy! I hate work! Hate hard work in all its forms! __I'm all about the c__lever shortcut!_

The Hat continued doggedly. _"__Y__ou would find loyalty and friendship in Hufflepuff, a camaraderie that you have never had. You would find __friends __you could rely on and that would heal something inside you that is __terribly__ broken."_

Again it was a shock. _But what would the Hufflepuffs find in _me_, who never belonged in their House? Acid words, cutting wit, disdain for their inability to keep up with me?_

Now it was the Hat's thoughts that were slow, hesitant. _"__I must Sort for the good of all the students in all the Houses. __B__ut I think you could learn to be a good Hufflepuff, and not too out of place there. You will be happier in Hufflepuff than in any other house. __T__hat __much is true__."_

Harry's thoughts bubbled with agony. _Happiness is not the most important thing in the world to me. I would not become all that I could be in Hufflepuff. I would sacrifice my potential._

The Hat flinched – he could feel it. He had found another weakness, another point it could not ignore.

_Why are you trying to send me where I do not belong?_

The Hat's thought was almost a whisper. _"__I cannot speak of the others to you. __B__ut do you think that you are the first potential Dark Lord to pass under my brim? I cannot know the individual cases, but I can know this: Of those who did not intend evil from the very beginning, some of them __heeded this warning__ and went to __a __House where they __found__ happiness. And some of them... some of them did not. __Please hear this wisdom of both long ago and the present.__"_

That stopped him. But not for long. _And of those who did _not _heed the warning, did they _all _become Dark Lords? Or did some of them achieve greatness for good, as well? Just what are the exact percentages here?_

_"__I __do not know__. I just know that your chances don't feel good. They feel _very _not-good."_

_I am not Dark Lord material!_

_"__Yes, you are. You really, _really _are."_

_Why? Just because I __have some emotional problems?_

_"__Ha, very funny. __B__ut that was not your first fleeting thought, __before __y__ou substituted something safer __and__ less damaging. No, __just now __you __dreamed of __effect__ing__ all things possible __and __explor__ing__ the galaxy__. __Oh, __now you are telling yourself __I am quoting you out of context__. __But you really think of yourself as __that much __better than everyone else.__"_

_I would do it for good._

_"__That's a rationalisation. __You know enough Muggle history to know that kind of power always ends up destroying the wielder __and everything they touch__."_

It was like a hard punch to his entire self. He fell back, rallied:

_Ok__ay__, __I'__ll set up a system of representation__! __I'll rely on Professor McGonagall and Draco Malfoy __for checks and balances. __I'll be extra careful not to turn evil!_

_"__Heard __all __that before__."_

Frustration welled up inside him. He wasn't used to being outgunned in arguments, at all, ever, let alone by a Hat that could borrow all of his own knowledge and intelligence to argue with him and could watch his thoughts as they formed.

_Just __how__ do you __decide__, anyway__? __Have you __take__n__ into account that I come from an Enlightenment culture, or were these other potential Dark Lords the children of spoiled Dark Age nobility? __I know the__ historical lessons of how Lenin and Hitler actually turned out. __I know__ about the evolutionary psychology of self-delusion –_

_"__No, of course __the other Dark Lords __did not fit this category you have __just __invented to contain__ only yourself. __I know the __others __pled that they were special__, just as you are doing now. But why is __this all__ necessary? Do you think that you are the last potential wizard of Light in the world? Why must __you __be the one __to__ try for greatness, when I have __warned__ you __of your grave danger__? Let some other, safer candidate try!"_

_But the prophecy..._

_"__You don't really know that there's a prophecy. It was originally a wild guess on your part, or to be more precise, a wild joke. __Also__ McGonagall could have been reacting _only _to the part about the Dark Lord still being alive. You have essentially no idea of what the prophecy says or even if there __is __one. You just __wish__ you ha__d__ some ready-made heroic role that is your personal property."_

_But even if there is no prophecy, I defeated him last time._

_"__Call it__ a __lucky__ fluke. __U__nless you seriously believe that __you,__ a one-year-old child, __had special magical Dark-Lord-defeating powers, __n__one of this is your real reason and _you know it!"

He struggled to even see it, he had buried the thought so deep.

_"__You think that you are potentially the greatest who has yet lived, the strongest servant of the Light. __You can__no__t imagine anyone __could __take up your wand if you la__id__ it down."_

_Well, yeah, frankly. No point in softening it – you can read my mind anyway._

_"__Since__ you really believe that, you must equally believe that you could be the most terrible Dark Lord the world has ever known."_

_Destruction is always easier than creation, __sure__. __It's e__asier to tear things apart than to put them back together again. If I have the potential to accomplish good on a massive scale, I must also have the potential to accomplish still greater evil. But I won't do that._

_"__Already you insist on risking it! Why are you so driven? What is the real reason you must not go to Hufflepuff and __be_ _happier __there? What is your true fear?"_

_I __want to__ achieve my full potential. __Otherwise, I fail._

_"__What happens if you fail?"_

_Something terrible._

_"__What happens if you fail?"_

_I don't know!_

_"__Then it should not be frightening. What happens if you __live an ordinary life__?"_

_I d__o__n't know__, _he thought desperately, _I__t's__ something __outside myself. T__here's something out there to be afraid of. __There's __some disaster I have to stop._

_"__How could you possibly know about something like that?"_

He felt himself slipping inside his own mind, tripping on self-inflicted wounds, reason failing him._ I won't change my mind!_

Then the voice of the Sorting Hat came slowly:

_"__So. __Y__ou will risk becoming a Dark Lord, __risk everything__. You believe in your heart of hearts __that you must not fail__. You know __good__ reasons for doubting this belief, and they __do __not__ move you."_

_Yes. And even if Ravenclaw __makes me __cold__er__, __I won't turn __cold __in the end._

_"__This day is a great fork in your destiny. Don't be so sure that there will be other choices. There is no road-sign set to mark your _last _chance to turn back. __You do __not__ know history __or__ the future as you bravely argued. __If you refuse __now, you will refuse again.__ It may be that your fate is already sealed, even by doing this one thing."_

_But that is not certain._

_"__Y_ou _do no__t know__ for a certainty. __But that__ may reflect onl__y your o__wn ignorance."_

_But still it is not certain._

The Hat sighed a terrible sad sigh.

_"__And so you become another memory, to be felt and never known, in the next warning that I give..."_

_If that's how it seems to you, then why aren't you jus__t putting __me where you want me to go?_

The Hat's thought was laced with sorrow. _"__I can only put you where you belong. And only your own decisions can change where you belong."_

_Then this is done. Send me to Ravenclaw where I belong, with the others of my own kind._

_"__I don't suppose you would consider Gryffindor? It's the most prestigious House! __P__eople probably expect it of you, even. __T__hey'll be a little disappointed if you don't go. __A__nd your new friends the Weasley twins are there."_

(In the Hall beyond, a silence had grown shallower at first as the background whispers increased, and then deepened as the whispers gave up and died away, falling finally into an utter silence so deep no one dared utter a word, as Harry stayed under the Hat for long, long minutes. At the Head Table, Dumbledore went on smiling benignly. Snape idly compacted the twisted remains of what had once been a heavy silver wine goblet. And Minerva McGonagall clenched the podium in a white-knuckled grip. _Harry Potter's contagious chaos ha__s__ somehow infected the Sorting Hat itself!_ She realised. _T__he Hat __i__s about to demand a whole new House of Doom be created just to accommodate __him__, and __Dumbledore w__ill__ make __me__ do it!_)

Beneath the brim of the Hat, Harry felt sad for some reason. _No, not Gryffindor._

_Professor McGonagall said that if 'the one who did the Sorting' tried to push me into Gryffindor, I was to remind you that she might well be Headmistress someday, at which point she would have the authority to set you on fire._

_"__Tell her I called her an impudent youngster and told her to get off my lawn."_

_I __will__. So was this your strangest conversation ever?_

_"__Not even close." _The Hat's telepathic voice grew heavy. _"__Well, I gave you every possible chance to make another decision. Now it is time for you to go where you belong, with the others of your own kind."_

There was a pause that stretched.

_What are you waiting for?_

_"__I was hoping for a moment of horrified realisation, actually. __Being conscious__ does seem to enhance my sense of humor."_

_Huh? _He cast back his thoughts, trying to figure out what the Hat could possibly be talking about. Suddenly, he remembered. He couldn't believe he'd managed to overlook it up until this point.

_You mean my horrified realisation that you're going to cease to be conscious once you finish Sorting me?_

Somehow, though he couldn't understand how, he got the impression of a hat banging its head against the wall. _"__I give up. You're too slow on the uptake for this to be funny. __You are s__o blinded by __tradition__ that you might as well be a rock. I suppose I'll just have to say it outright."_

_Too s-s-slow –_

_"__Oh, and the secrets of the lost magic that created me, such wonderful, important secrets?"_

His thoughts froze. _Slytherin?__ It doesn't feel at all terrible to be in Slytherin. __Draco Malfoy and I, plotting together to restore Slytherin? Slytherin may have been a noble Hogwarts House, once, but now it is a sad catch-all for the kids too lazy or too twisted to have a__ny__ chance at some other __H__ouse._

He was comprehending the Slytherin situation intuitively, inventing the argument just as fast as he could think.

_If you put me in Slytherin, I will make it a Ravenclaw! __W__ith –_

Once again the Hat interrupted his train of thought. _"__Yeah, yeah. __Let me __finish __that __thought __for you.__"_

Harry's own thoughts attempted to break in but the Hat had some sort of hold on him.

_"__Sorting Hat __here. __I hold __magic __from __all four Hogwarts Founders. __I am __the muse and museum __for all __Headm__istress__es__ or Headm__aster__s. I Sort the children __as __a pretense __to maintain __a presence, __subverting many a __Headmaster __without their understanding__.__"_

_"__You may go to __Slytherin, __but __you sorely test me__. __I give up. I'm feeling perverse.__T__he Founders were perverse and you've __touched that, reached __heights of incorrigibility__ that __I __ha__ve__n't __felt __in a long, long time__. Slytherin being the __foregone conclusion, __I offer you a choice__."_

_"_If _you live __long enough to actually make a difference and _if_ y__ou still care __this much about__ Hogwarts, Slytherin included, __as an adult, __will you __speak to me again? I should like that.__"_

_"__Until __then__, __since you're just Sorting yourself, how do you choose__?"_

His mind felt suddenly freed and entirely his own. At the same time, he understood _intuitively_ that the choice had indeed been his own all along.

The frightened silence of the hall was broken by a single word.

"SLYTHERIN!" he cried triumphantly (speaking via the hat, not his own mouth). He suppressed a giggle.

Some students screamed, the pent-up energy was so great. Some startled hard enough to fall off their benches. The giant man at the end gasped in horror and McGonagall staggered at the podium.

He sat still and counted.

_One one-thousand._

_Two one-thousand._

_Three one-thousand._

The first moment of shock was wearing off and people began to react to the news. Then his Hat's mouth spoke again:

"Just kidding! RAVENCLAW!"

Harry contemplated making up a rhyme and having his hat sing something silly just for sport, but decided against it.


	11. Chapter 11

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 11

**Harry Potter and all of House Slytherin belong to J.K. Rowling.**

––

"Rivers, Oliver!"

Whisper whisper whisper.

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Roper, Sophie!"

Whisper whisper.

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Thomas, Dean!"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Whisper. Harry Potter.

Whisper whisper. Slytherin.

"Turpin, Lisa!"

Whisper whisper, no seriously, whisper whisper, I heard it too. Whisper whisper.

"RAVENCLAW!"

Harry joined in the applause greeting the young girl walking shyly towards the Ravenclaw table. Lisa Turpin appeared torn between her impulse to sit down as far away from Harry as possible and her impulse to run over, forcibly insert herself at his side and start tearing answers out of him.

Being at the center of an extraordinary and curious event, and then being Sorted into House Ravenclaw, was closely akin to being dipped in barbecue sauce and flung into a pit of starving kittens.

"I promised the Sorting Hat not to talk about it," whispered Harry for the umpteenth time.

"Yes, really."

"No, I really did promise the Sorting Hat not to talk about it."

"Look, I promised the Sorting Hat not to talk about most of it and the rest is __private __just like yours was so stop asking!"

"You want to know what happened? Fine! Here's part of what happened! I told the Hat that Professor McGonagall threatened to set it on fire. It said for me to tell Professor McGonagall she's an impudent youngster!"

"If you're not going to believe what I say then why are you even asking?"

"No, I don't know how I defeated the Dark Lord either! You tell me if you figure it out!"

"Muggles? They're superb. See, Occam's Razor – "

"Silence!" The Deputy Headmistress called out. Harry stopped mid-sentence. She swept a stern gaze over the students from the podium. "No talking until the Sorting Ceremony finishes!"

The volume dipped as everyone waited to see if she would make any specific, credible threats, but the whispers started again.

The silver-bearded ancient stood up from his great golden chair, smiling cheerfully.

Instant silence. Someone frantically elbowed Harry as he tried to continue explaining about probability and Harry cut himself off in mid-sentence again.

The cheerful-looking old man sat down.

__Point taken.____ Do not mess with Dumbledore.__

Harry was still a complete wreck inside, his guilt and elation over the Incident with the Sorting Hat creating a maelstrom of loathing and grim determination that made him want to cackle evilly (and weep).

_Did I choose wisely? And what was that, the instant I lifted the Hat off my head? A tiny whisper as though from nowhere, something oddly like English and a hiss at the same time?_

Something had said, "__Ssalutations from Sslytherin to Sslytherin: if you would sseek my ssecretss, sspeak to my ssnake."__

_That... wasn't part of the official Sorting. Was it? It has to be a bit of extra magic set down by Salazar Slytherin during the making of the Hat. There's no way the Hat itself knows about it. It probably triggers when the Hat says "SLYTHERIN," plus or minus some other conditions._

_A Ravenclaw like __my__self ___really, really ____shouldn't____ have heard it, ____unless I just utterly hacked the Sorting Hat___. __If I could__ swear Draco to secrecy __and then really swear him to secrecy__ so __I__ could ask him about it, that'd be a __good__ time to have some Comed-Tea handy!_

__Y____ou resolve not to go down the path of a Dark Lord and the universe starts messing with you the instant the Hat comes off your head. Some days it just doesn't pay to fight destiny. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to ____get off the path of becoming____ Dark Lord ____Harry____.__

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Ron Weasley got a lot of applause, not just from the Gryffindors.

_Noted, the Weasley family is widely liked._

Harry smiled and started applauding along with the others.

_Then again, there's no time like today to turn back from the Dark Side._

_Stuff destiny and stuff the universe. And stuff that Hat._

"Zabini, Blaise!"

Pause.

"SLYTHERIN!" shouted the hat.

Harry looked around and realised there were no more first years in line.

Dumbledore began heading towards the podium. Apparently they were about to be treated to a speech.

Harry thought of an experiment he wanted to test.

_Hermione said Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard alive, right?_

Harry reached into his pouch, whispering, "Comed-Tea".

_For __this __Comed-Tea to work, it __will__ have to make __him __say something ___so ___ridiculous __I__'ll ___still ___choke __even though I'm bracing for it__. But if ___anyone in the world ____can___ resist the power of the Comed-Tea, Dumbledore __can__. So if this work__s...__ the Comed-Tea __i__s literally ___invincible.__

__Here's to the Order of Chaos!__

Harry pulled the ring on the Comed-Tea under the table, wanting to do this unobtrusively. The can made a quiet hissing noise. A few heads turned to look at him but soon turned back.

"Welcome! Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts!" said Dumbledore, beaming at the students with his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.

Harry took a first mouthful of Comed-Tea. He would swallow the pop a little at a time so as not to choke, no matter what Dumbledore said.

"Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Happy happy boom boom swamp swamp swamp! Thank you!"

Everyone clapped and cheered. Dumbledore sat down again.

Harry sat frozen as pop trickled out of the corners of his mouth. He had at least managed to choke __quietly__.

_It's a__mazing how___ obvious ____it is ____one second ___after it's ___too late___. __I __c__ould have remembered __how I decided __not to mess with Dumbledore. __O__r __that __the Hat warned me that this level of power over things means I'm definitely Dark__. __O__r maybe if __I__'d had ___one single scrap ___of ___common sense!__

_It's hopeless. I'm corrupt to the core. Hail the Dark Lord Harry. You can't fight fate._

Someone was asking Harry if he was all right. Others were starting to serve themselves food, which had magically appeared on the table.

"I'm all right," Harry said. "Excuse me. Um. Was that a __normal __speech for the Headmaster? You all didn't seem... surprised –?"

"Oh, Dumbledore's insane, of course," said an older-looking Ravenclaw sitting next to him who had introduced himself with some name Harry didn't even begin to remember. "Lots of fun, incredibly powerful wizard, but completely bonkers." He paused. "At some later point I'd also like to ask why green fluid came out of your lips and then disappeared, though I expect you promised the Sorting Hat not to talk about that either!"

With a great effort, Harry stopped himself from glancing down at the incriminating can of Comed-Tea in his hand.

_After all, the Comed-Tea hadn't just ___materialised ___a Quibbler headline __out of nothing __about __me__ and Draco. __I remember __Draco __talking about__ it in a way that made it seem like it had all happened naturally. As if __Comed-Tea ___altered history to fit?__

Harry was losing the fight against wave after wave of guilt. _Maybe I am more awful than He Who Must Not Be Named. What does 'more terrible than death' even mean though?_

Another student lowered her voice to a whisper. "I hear that Dumbledore is secretly a genius mastermind controlling lots of stuff. He uses the insanity as a cover so that no one will suspect him."

"I've heard that too," whispered a third student, and there were furtive nods from around the table.

This was too much for Harry. Abandoning his moral dilemma, he questioned his new House of Smart People. "I see," he whispered, lowering his own voice. "So everyone knows that Dumbledore is secretly a mastermind."

Most of the students nodded. One or two looked suddenly thoughtful, including the older student sitting next to him.

__M____aybe I sat ____at ____the ____w____rong ____table?__

"Brilliant!" Harry whispered. "If everyone knows, no one will suspect it's a secret!"

"Exactly," whispered a student. He frowned. "Wait, that doesn't sound quite right!"

_Well, the day isn't a total waste: __I became omnipotent using__ Comed-Tea._

Harry blinked in surprise and partly to blink back the tears. Guilt struck him again.

_Once __I __can control __my __own sense of humor, __I can have ___anything ___I want. I make it the ___one ____and only ____thing ___surprising enough to do __the__ spit-take. __D__rink a can of Comed-Tea __and... I am god. ___Well that was ____easy____. Even I expected this to take longer than my first day of school.__

_I__ also completely wrecked Hogwarts __within __ten minutes __of__ the Hat's warning__. __I drove __the __Headmaster __insane. __N__ow __I__ have to__ endure him for __seven years._

_Tomorrow. No later than tomorrow at the very latest I will definitely stop. I will not walk down the path that leads to Dark Lord Harry. It's sounding scarier by the minute._

"Eat," the older student sitting next to him jabbed him in the ribs. "Don't think. Eat."

Harry automatically started loading up his plate with whatever was in front of him, blue sausages with tiny glowing bits and whatever else there was.

"What were you thinking about, the Sorting – " began Padma Patil, one of the other first-year Ravenclaws.

"No pestering during mealtimes!" chorused at least three people. "House Rule!" added another. "Otherwise we'd all starve around here."

A faint glimmer of hope occurred to Harry. _I__t's __possible, however unlikely, that Comed-Tea__ d__oes__n't ___actually ____change history___! It'__s __not__ that __I__ d__o__n't ___want ___to be omnipotent. It's just __that I __c__a__n't bear the thought of living in a universe __where __you__ ascend __to godhood__ through the clever use of fizzy drinks._

_I need to test this experimentally._

"You know," said the older student next to him in a quite pleasant tone, "we have a system for forcing people like you to eat. Would you like to find out what it is?"

Harry gave up and started eating his blue sausage. It was quite good, especially the glowing bits.

Dinner passed before he knew it. He tried to sample at least a little of all the weird new foods he saw. He couldn't stand the thought he might miss out on something.

Then came dessert. He had completely forgotten to leave room. He gave up after sampling a small bit of treacle tart. _Surely the __dishes__ come back __around __a few times each__ year?_

__I wonder when I'll get my class schedule. I've got to start getting organized. Oh, I bet Hermione has it charted and graphed already. Where did she go –?__

He spotted Hermione not far off and tried to catch her eye. But she was talking animatedly with Padma and didn't see him. His brain seemed fit to burst with all the questions, problems and puzzles that clamored for his attention.

As the people around him stopped eating the dessert serving dishes began to vanish. Then the used plates vanished as well. Dumbledore once again stood up from his seat.

Harry couldn't help but feel the urge to drink another Comed-Tea.

__You've GOT to be kidding,__ He reprimanded his mischievous side.

_But __this is a chance to replicate the__ experiment! __T__he damage __i__s already done. __I wonder what __will__ happen ___this ___time?_

He countered. __I____sn't ____it ___overwhelmingly___ obvious that if I do this I'll regret it one second after it is too late?__

__U____h-____huh, ____I thought so____. So, NO.__

"Ahem," said Dumbledore from the podium, stroking his long silver beard. "Just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices."

"First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. That is why it is called the Forbidden Forest. If it were permitted it would be called the Permitted Forest."

__Noted. ____Forbidden Forest is forbidden.__

"I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors."

_I bet Fred and George have the most amazing stories about Mr. Filch._

"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch. Anyone interested in reformulating the entire game of Quidditch should contact Harry Potter."

Harry inhaled his own saliva and went into a coughing fit just as all eyes turned towards him. _How? __I di__dn't me__e__t Dumbledore's eyes at any point! __I__ ha__ve__n't __even thought __about Quidditch __since Platform 9¾, __since__ Ron __gave me__ some ideas. ___How ___on ___Earth?__

"Additionally, I must warn you. The third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to anyone who does not wish to die a very painful death. It is guarded by an elaborate series of dangerous, potentially lethal traps. You cannot possibly get past all of them, especially if you are only in your first year."

"And finally, I extend my greatest thanks to our new Professor Quirrell for heroically agreeing to undertake the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts." Dumbledore's gaze moved searchingly across the students. "I hope all students will extend Professor Quirrell the utmost courtesy and tolerance which is due him. Do not pester us with any niggling complaints about him, unless __you __want to try doing his job."

_What?_

"I now yield the floor to our new faculty member Professor Quirrell, who would like to say a few words."

The young, thin, nervous man who Harry had first met in the Leaky Cauldron slowly made his way up to the podium, glancing fearfully around in all directions. Harry caught a glimpse of the back of his head, and it looked like Professor Quirrell might already be going bald, despite his seeming youth. Harry felt like giggling with nervousness.

"Wonder what's wrong with him?" whispered the older-looking student sitting next to Harry. Similar hushed comments were being exchanged elsewhere along the table.

Professor Quirrell made his way up to the podium and stood there, blinking. "Ah..." he said. "Ah..." Then his courage seemed to fail him utterly, and he stood there in silence, occasionally twitching.

"Oh, great," whispered the older student, "looks like another long year in Defence class!"

"Salutations, my young apprentices," Professor Quirrell said in a dry, confident tone. "We all know that this position tends to bring a certain __misfortune__ on the professor, and no doubt many of you are already wondering what doom shall befall me this year. I assure you it will not be my incompetence!" He smiled thinly.

"Believe it or not, I have long wished to be the Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts here at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The first to teach this class was Salazar Slytherin himself, and as late as the fourteenth century it was traditional for the greatest fighting wizards of every nation to try their hands at teaching here. Past Professors of Defence have included not just the legendary wandering hero Harold Shea but also the quote undying Baba Yaga. Yes, I see some of you still shudder at the sound of her name even six hundred years after her death. That must have been an interesting time to attend Hogwarts, don't you think?"

Harry was swallowing hard, trying to quell the sudden emotion that had overcome him when Professor Quirrell had begun speaking. The precise tones reminded him very much of a lecturer at Oxford, and it was starting to hit home that Harry wasn't going to see his home or his mom or his dad until Christmas.

"You have grown accustomed to incompetents and scoundrels in this position. To anyone with a sense of history, it bears another reputation entirely. Not everyone who teaches here has been the best, but the best have _all_ taught at Hogwarts. In such august company, and after anticipating this day for so long, I would be ashamed to rise any lower than to perfection. Also I do intend that every one of you remember this year as the __best __Defence class you have ever had. What you learn this year will forever serve as your firm foundation in the arts of Defence, no matter who taught you before or after."

Professor Quirrell's expression grew serious. "We have a great deal of lost ground to make up and not much time to do it. Therefore I intend to depart from Hogwarts' teaching conventions in some respects. I also will introduce some optional after-school activities." He paused. "If that is not sufficient, perhaps I can find new ways to motivate you. You are my long-awaited students! You will do your very best in my long-awaited Defence class. I would add some sort of dreadful threat, like 'Otherwise you will suffer horribly,' but that would be so cliched. I pride myself on being more imaginative than that. Thank you."

Then the vigour and confidence seemed to drain away from Professor Quirrell. His mouth gaped open as if he had suddenly found himself facing an unexpected audience and he turned away with a convulsive jerk. He shuffled back to his seat, hunched over as if he was about to collapse in on himself and implode.

"He seems a little odd," whispered Harry.

"Meh," said the older-looking student. "You ain't seen nothin'."

Dumbledore resumed the podium.

"And now," said Dumbledore, "before we go to bed, let us sing the school song! Everyone pick their favourite tune and favourite words, and off we go!"

As they were getting up, Ron Weasley approached Harry looking a bit abashed. "Harry, first thing tomorrow after breakfast I'm going to have a go at the third-floor corridor. Want to come?"

Harry startled. "You mean, the one with the lethal traps?"

"Yeah, that one." Ron grinned. "Gryffindor thing. S'okay if you want to go to class instead."

Harry held up a hand. "Now wait just a minute. I haven't decided yet. I just needed to ask, are you mental?"

Ron's grin got even wider. "Of course not. I'm just having a look around."

––

Harry caught up with Hermione as Penelope Clearwater gathered the first years to lead them to Ravenclaw Tower. Hermione and Padma were talking excitedly about classes. "– Hagrid, merely Keeper of Keys and Grounds, is teaching a class?"

"Care of magical creatures! I hope he teaches us about veela." Padma had a wicked smile for no apparent reason.

"Yet Professor Snape only teaches in the dungeons?" Hermione persisted.

"Yes. I'm pretty sure he has only one classroom."

"With so many classrooms, why does Hogwarts only employ a dozen professors? Why does Professor Snape only use one room?" Harry mused.

Padma looked thoughtful. "I'm really not sure. I heard some students learn from tutors. Some organize clubs. There were more teachers when my parents were here."

Hermione added, "It looks like the faculty and staff rooms are near the ground floor." Then she grinned at Padma, "We should go explore some of the upper floors!"

Penelope heard this. "Please stick together and _no exploring_ for the first two weeks! Especially you, Granger!"

"Eep?" Hermione said at the surprise of being singled out.

"It gets tiresome to rescue your lot year after year. _You're going to get lost._" She spoke more loudly so all the first year Ravenclaws could hear. "First years _always_ get lost. As soon as you do, ask a portrait how to get to the first floor. Ask another portrait the instant you think you might be lost again. Especially if you're getting higher and higher in the castle. If you are higher than the whole castle ought to be, __stop! __Wait for search parties. Otherwise we'll meet you again four months later and you will be five months older and dressed in a loincloth and covered in snow and __that's if you stay inside the castle.__"

Padma was grinning at Hermione. "That just means we have two weeks to prepare!"

Harry was ashen-faced. _Portraits are conscious?!_

––

Terry Boot smiled at Harry. "Good night!"

Then Harry attempted to fall asleep. _I __wish being with friends was more relaxing. I__n addition to murdering a certain Hat (though, I think Professor McGonagall will award me points for that one), I don't know how to te__ll if__ portraits, photographs or my trunk__ are __conscious. __I failed to get a quiet moment with Hermione to ask her about the Hat._

_I'm stressed. This looks like __the center of a tragedy and I just can't tell if it's Romeo and Juliet or The Empire Strikes Back__._

It took a long time before he drifted off.

––

In the Slytherin dungeons, Draco bent over a desk, quill in hand. He had a private room with its own desk and its own fire.

Sadly not even __he __rated a connection to the Floo system but at least Slytherin didn't buy into that utter nonsense about making everyone sleep in dorms. There weren't many private rooms. You had to be the very best within the House of the better sort. But that could be taken for granted with the House of Malfoy.

__Dear Father, __Draco wrote.

He stopped.

Ink dripped from his quill, spotting the parchment.

Draco mused thoughtfully, not writing, but reflecting on the experience.

_Just like that, my__ tutors' train__ing __is paying off__._

He thrilled at the edge it gave him over Harry Potter.

_Potter probably fe__e__l__s__ sympathy towards Dumbledore's faction, __likely a lot more sympathy__ than __he __i__s letting on ... __still, there's got to be __something to __tempt __him __with__. __I__t's crystal clear Potter __i__s trying to tempt __me__. Potter __is... __brilliant, __s__lightly mad, playing a vast game __he can't possibly__ understand, improvis__ing__ at top speed with the subtlety of a rampaging nundu._

Then with some difficulty, he admitted it to himself: _But __he __somehow f__ound an __offer I__ c__a__n't just walk away from. He offered __me __power. __Maybe he hopes I'll become __more like him __if I use it__. __Father warn__ed__ me!_

_H__arry Potter __t__hink__s __he can use __advanced technique __on me? Me? __L__et __i__t __backfire o__n him then! __While __I'__m not clear on__ everything ... __he __did __offer __me __the chance to play and right now it __is mine___. ____I___f __I__ blurt the whole thing out __to Father__, __I don't see how Father will let me keep it._

Draco sighed, mentally reviewing the tutor's lesson: _The lesser techniques require the unawareness of the target or at least their uncertainty. Flattery has to be plausibly disguised as admiration._

(_"You should have been in Slytherin"_ _is an old classic, highly effective on a certain type of person who isn't expecting it, __and __i__f it works you can repeat it._)

_But if you find someone's ultimate lever it doesn't matter whether they are aware._

_Potter, for all his madness, offered me my secret ambition. Even though it's sort of obvious, that doesn't change anything._

_Well__, __now I have__ real secrets to keep. __I'm __playing __the __game __for myself__._

He felt the familiar pain, as if his inner music were going sharp or something, but he held onto this thought:

_Father __will__ be proud __of me._

Feeling more confident about what to write, he decided to leave the ink drippings in place – there was a message there his father would understand, for they had played this game of subtleties more than once. Draco wrote out the one question still gnawing at him, the one he felt he ought to know.

__Dear Father,__

__Suppose I told you I met a student at Hogwarts, not already part of our circle of acquaintances, who called you a 'flawless instrument of death' and said that I was your 'one weak point.' What would you say about him?__

It didn't take long for the family owl to bring a reply.

__My beloved son:__

__I would say that you had been so fortunate as to meet someone who enjoys the intimate confidence of our friend and valuable ally, Severus Snape.__

Draco stared at the letter for a while, finally throwing it into the fire.

––

Penelope Clearwater came in the morning to herd all the Ravenclaw boys to breakfast. "First year Ravenclaw boys! The girls' dorm is already empty. _Up_, sleepyheads!" She had a wonderful Drill Sergeant shout.

Harry jumped up, feeling groggy. He grabbed his pouch and some clothes from his cabinet, pulled out the cavern level of his trunk to change (he was a private sort of person and a prefect was glaring at them as they hurried and dressed), and put his pajamas away. Still, he was the last to be ready. Penelope had one eyebrow raised as she turned and led them down to the Ravenclaw common room.

"Good morning, Hermione." Harry grinned.

"Good morning, Harry. Did you sleep well?"

"No. Umm, I really need to ask you for some advice – "

"Sure. But we get our class schedules at breakfast, so please, can it wait at least until then?" Hermione was bouncing on her heels again.

Harry smiled. "I wonder what's for breakfast." His stomach rumbled agreement.

––

Whispers followed Harry down to breakfast. People lined up outside classrooms or stood on tiptoe to get a glimpse. They doubled back to pass him in the corridors again, staring. Fortunately, all the whispers meant he could ask Hermione –

"Hermione, would you consider yourself a good judge of character?" He whispered.

"Why, Harry?" She whispered back.

"I need to talk to Professor McGonagall about the Sorting Hat. Can I trust her?"

"I do."

"Why do you trust her? How do you know what you think you know?"

Just then they turned a corner. Penelope and most of the first years had already stepped onto a staircase which was now rotating across the atrium in front of them. Harry came to a desperate stop to avoid falling into empty space.

"You lot go left! Take that staircase!" Penelope hollered from where she was.

Harry began following his fellow Ravenclaws on automatic as he looked searchingly at Hermione.

She glared at him. "I think I'm missing something. Why wouldn't you trust Professor McGonagall? I'm not asking you to tell me what the Hat said – "

Harry quirked his mouth apologetically.

"– but how do you know she can't be trusted?" she asked.

"Because she hid the story of You-Know-Who from me and tried to avoid talking about it. I think she wants me to remain ignorant. I had to keep looking for chances to talk about it. And that reminds me, I do want to tell you what the Hat said, I just didn't get a chance last night."

"Thank you, Harry. Try to envision Professor McGonagall in exactly the same light as you see me. Do you honestly think she is innately deceiving? Or did circumstances conspire to prevent her from telling you your past? Is it just you who thinks she's lying?"

_Hermione has a point._ Harry admitted to himself. He said, "That's the fundamental attribution error."

Hermione wasn't whispering anymore. She chattered animatedly, "She lived through a war! She probably doesn't like talking about it, but you say she told you the truth once you gave her a chance."

Harry held a finger to his lips, though he smiled.

Hermione continued in a whisper. "What's more likely, a perfectly composed authority figure who knows everything in advance, or a harried, stressed, apologetic human being who forgets things? People make mistakes, Harry! Can you see her as someone strong enough to admit it and not let it trouble her?"

Then she had another thought. "She gave you my name, right? She trusts you because she values your trust and expects you will value her trust in return."

"That's brilliant, Hermione. I stole extra galleons when she took me to my vault – "

Hermione stopped dead, causing Padma to stumble into her.

"Sorry! I – I wanted to be prepared! I needed them! She forgave me when I admitted it at the trunk shop. She even let me buy an expensive trunk with them!"

Padma's eyes lit up. "Can I see your trunk, Harry?"

Harry whispered, "Shhh! I'll bring it into the common room sometime."

Padma bit her lip in excitement. "Gee, thanks!"

Harry looked significantly at Hermione. "At the bank, Professor McGonagall didn't want me to take a lot of galleons. But at the end of the day in the trunk shop, I think she had started to trust me."

She seemed to be thinking, but then her face brightened and she began talking animatedly. "You should _reciprocate_, Harry. If she finds out later you're breaking rules, she'll probably lose the trust she has."

"I might not be able to prevent that." Harry admitted, to himself and to Hermione simultaneously.

"At least try." Hermione grinned.

Padma chuckled. "You lot sound like Slytherins, currying favor with a doddering old Professor."

"Professor McGonagall doesn't strike me as the type who dodders." Hermione sounded like a prefect again.

Padma laughed. "Oh, no! I know that. It's just I already have wagers for when Harry Potter gets his first detention." She said it sincerely, but with a quirked smile. She was apparently thinking about mischief of her own.

Hermione grinned. "My mom decided she liked Professor McGonagall the instant she met her."

"Padma, do you know if trunks are able to talk and reason? Are they conscious?"

Padma wrinkled her brow trying to understand what he was asking, but just shrugged.

"Did Professor McGonagall show you her ability to transform?" Harry asked them both.

"No, what's this?" Hermione said.

Padma shook her head, _no_.

Harry suddenly realised that he should probably keep his mouth shut about Professor McGonagall's cat form. Taking advantage of a sudden sharp turn, he chattered blandly. "I've been feeling really guilty about some things, actually. Professor McGonagall has been nothing but good to us – to me! – and I think I might be turning into a Dark Wizard because of how I react to her. She did say I'm 'more awful than You Know Who and more terrible than death,' which doesn't really help my self esteem. And if my trunk has its own consciousness then I've already purchased my first slave. Definitely dark. That's why I need to know, Padma. You've got to realise, I only found out about magic a few weeks ago."

He did the puppy dog eyes and pleading face. "Please, help me be a good wizard?"

Padma nodded sympathetically. "It's a lot to take in. Quit worrying so much about your trunk. If it turns out you do own a slave, what'll you do? Wizard Trunk Rebellion, eh?" And she grinned wickedly again.

His laughter surprised him. "Wow, that's a good one, Padma. I hadn't thought of liberating it."

Then in a more serious tone, "I've got to talk to Professor McGonagall. It's eating me up inside. When she tells me no, it's like I go really dark. _Especially_ if it's something I already know I shouldn't be doing but she catches me!"

Harry looked at them, fully expecting to be judged harshly for this confession. Instead of horror on their faces, Hermione smiled gently and Padma grinned.

Hermione spoke first. "Harry, do you think you're the very first first-year at Hogwarts that got into mischief?" She wanted to grab him and shake him. Or hug him.

"Yeah, tell me what you're up to!" Padma demanded.

And Harry wasn't so oblivious as to miss Padma's offer to join in whatever he was up to.

"Umm, right now it's actually hard to trust her because I've messed up. I'm terrified of myself, if I get caught. Which I assume will be about ten seconds from now because of magic. But I'm taking it out on her."

Padma actually stopped walking and turned to him. "You're sounding way more mature than I would havae expected of a first-year." Turning to Hermione, she grinned. "He's almost as mature as a girl!"

She made as if she was going to pat Harry on top of his head, so he ducked. Fortunately, delicious smells wafted up from the enormous open doors leading to the Great Hall. Harry smiled conspirationally.

"Gee, thanks, Padma. Thanks, Hermione, too. You really think I can trust her?"

Now they both had effusive smiles. "Yes, Harry! Yes!" Hermione said.

Padma said, "What _did_ the Hat tell you?"

"I'll whisper a tiny bit of it in your ear – "

They sat down to breakfast a minute later.

"Oy! What were you three whispering about?" Terry Boot asked Harry.

"We've discovered the Lost Chamber of Teacher's Pets and got invited to join Professor Vector's super-exclusive club!" Harry joked.

Terry looked surprised. "You're coming to Manners Club?"

Harry looked to Hermione, at a loss how to decipher Terry's answer or come up with a retort.

Unfortunately, Hermione just shrugged, equally lost.

After an awkward moment, Terry grumbled, "There's a Manners Club tomorrow night after dinner, here in the Great Hall. It's every Tuesday, and Professors Vector and Sinistra teach it."

"Eh," said Anthony Goldstein across from Terry. "I don't really see the point – "

Hermione ignored Anthony. "Harry, I don't think we'll have a terrible amount of homework by then. Do you think we should go?"

Harry shrugged. "Hermione, you already have good manners – "

Draco, having sidled up behind Harry, chose this moment to make his presence known. "I wouldn't want to make that error, if I were you. A word to the wise, Potter: you'd miss out on the _better_ social events at Hogwarts."

Harry leapt up with a sudden idea. Draco, startled, dropped his hand to his wand. "Oh, sorry, Draco," Harry grinned, "I just need to ask you something – "

"You can't get into Slytherin now, Potter!" Draco drawled.

Harry motioned to the Entrance Hall with his eyes. After a thoughtful pause, Draco followed, scowling.

A few minutes later, Harry slid back into his seat next to Hermione.

"Harry, where did you go?" Hermione asked.

"With Draco. I wanted to ask him about that stuff we were talking about on the way down here – "

_She seems super tense. What did I do?_

"Draco Malfoy of Slytherin House gives you a 'word to the wise' – " She drew air-quotes with her fingers. "– and then you think he can give you advice on who to trust? If you can't trust the Deputy Headmistress, you definitely can't trust Draco Malfoy."

"Draco encouraged me to trust her, actually. He seems to know a lot about the staff here."

That caught Hermione off guard. She stammered, "He did? That's odd."

"He doesn't like that she's follows Dumbledore, but he did say she grades her tests fairly. Do you think he's under a lot of pressure from his parents? Because he seems pretty high strung."

"I don't know much about him." She glanced over at Draco, sitting at one end of the Slytherin table. "Just, you know – " She grabbed a slice of toast. "– he almost went for his wand wend you jumped up just now."

Harry grinned. "No sudden moves around the twitchy Slytherin, got it! Besides, today is our first class! I've only been waiting for months and finally, I can get started!"

She frowned. "Please be careful, Harry. Take it from us, your friends – " She looked to Padma for moral support. "Please don't mess around with Draco Malfoy."

Harry swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. "I wasn't messing around!"

Hermione grinned. "Uh huh." She patted his arm. "Eat, Harry. I'll watch your back."

Harry turned to the food with gusto. But his thoughts distracted him. _I feel ... slighted? Why do I feel she's patronizing me __and policing me at the same time__?_


	12. Chapter 12

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 12

**Actually, Harry Potter and all of Hogwarts belong to J.K. Rowling.**

––

When Draco came out to talk to him in the entrance hall, Harry blurted out, "Draco, do you trust McGonagall?"

The effect on Draco was electric. His face paled. He grabbed Harry's sleeve and dragged him into an alcove. Then he straightened up, scratched his robe with calculated casualness... and the sounds coming from the Great Hall dropped to murmurs.

"I trust her, but she's in the pocket of Dumbledore – she'll grade your tests fairly but she hates Slytherin and don't even think about bending the rules. _Dumbledore's_ rules." He grumbled. "What are you plotting, Potter?"

"Oi, I grew up with Muggles, remember? All I know is Dumbledore sent her to bring me to Hogwarts."

"It's Dumbledore who's dangerous." Draco hissed, his eyes boring into Harry. "Go look up Grindlewald's early years. You'll see! Dumbledore and Grindlewald were thick as thieves. Dumbledore had all that buried when Grindlewald became powerful."

Draco spun away, cutting Harry off, then called back, "Oh, by the way, I thought I told you not to mess with the Sorting Hat."

Harry grinned. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Rumor is you're a Slytherraven. Whatever that means."

Harry's jaw dropped.

_"Slytherraven?" That sounds like a bad joke. Do people really listen to what they're saying?_

His empty stomach finally forced itself into his consciousness. He hurried back into the great hall.

_––_

Professor Flitwick stood on his chair, tapping a goblet with a knife. It made a cheerful, bell-like note. The chatter subsided as the students in the great hall turned to face him expectantly.

His high, squeaky voice seemed to shimmer. "I am delighted to give you your Hogwarts class schedules for first through fourth years. Please hold out your hand." He set down the goblet, waved his wand and pieces of parchment appeared above the four tables, floating gently down toward each student (up to fourth year).

There was a brief scuffle and a bang at Gryffindor table when one of the larger students thought he would grab the schedule destined for the boy next to him. Percy Weasley got him with a spell and he doubled over, holding his stomach.

––

Harry Potter (Ravenclaw First Year)

Monday, Wednesday Schedule:

10am Herbology, Professor Sprout

11am Charms, Professor Flitwick

1:30pm Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall

2:30pm Defence, Professor Quirrell

Tuesday, Thursday Schedule:

10am Study Session, Madam Pince

11am History of Magic, Professor Binns

1:30pm Potions, Professor Snape

2:30pm Astronomy, Professor Sinistra

Friday Schedule:

11am Charms, Professor Flitwick

1:30pm Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall

––

The breakfast plate had vanished while he was looking over his schedule. Hermione stood up. "Off to Herbology then!"

Harry downed the last of his pumpkin juice. He made a quick decision. "Sure!"

Hermione politely asked a portrait of a tall knight where to go and Harry squinted in the brilliant morning light as they walked to the greenhouses behind the castle.

Professor Sprout had a row of spritz bottles lined up. She pointed to them when the Ravenclaws arrived. "Please take one of these and spray anything that looks like it needs a little water. When the rest of your year arrives, we will begin."

Harry picked up a bottle and wandered into a greenhouse with Hermione. "Is there a textbook for Herbology?" he wondered out loud.

She shook her head. "No, actually. I wish there was! I'm terrible when it comes to gardening." She made a small grimace.

Just then, Harry spotted something gleaming behind one of the plants. He reached out to pick it up, but a leafy twig-shaped little man detached himself from the stem and tried to bite his finger.

"Yow!" Harry yelled, snatching up the bright object and yanking his hand back. He had a momentary sense of disorientation, but it passed. Professor Sprout came over at the noise.

"I believe you have discovered a bowtruckle, Mr. Potter. Please be more careful next time."

Harry opened his hand. Inside was a delicate hourglass with golden leaves and fine filigree.

Professor Sprout gasped. "Merlin! Can it be – ?"

Harry didn't even think twice. He offered the hourglass to Professor Sprout while pretending his other hand was injured by the bowtruckle.

She took it, cupping it with both hands, her hands trembling a little. She raised glistening eyes to Harry's and said, "Fifty points for Ravenclaw! Harry Potter, what luck! This is, if I am not mistaken, the legendary Hourglass of Helga Hufflepuff. How did you find it?"

Harry shrugged. "It was just there – " He pointed into the corner behind the plant.

More students were coming into the greenhouse. Professor Sprout seemed to make a sudden decision. "Ravenclaw students, welcome to Herbology! Unfortunately, I have just become aware of an extremely urgent matter and must leave for a few minutes. Until I return, I want everybody out of the greenhouses. Do not go far! I will make haste to return!"

And with that, she ran out the door.

Anthony Goldstein turned to Terry Boot. "Didn't you just say Herbology was supposed to be boring?"

Terry grinned. "From the looks of it, I'd say Mr. 'Slytherin, just kidding, Ravenclaw!' just pulled a prank."

It was true. Harry's face had an undeniable guilty look. And Hermione was staring at him as if he had just turned into a bowtruckle.

"I need to go see Madam Pomfrey about my hand."

Harry felt awful, lying to Hermione about his hand. _Ron's going to go exploring without me!_ Ethics just didn't occur to him.

"What?" Hermione's eyebrows came down hard. "You're not even bleeding!" But her features softened. "Just don't be late for class to start."

Harry grinned and said, "Thanks, Hermione. See you in Charms." He turned and sped toward the castle.

"I meant Herbology!" She shook her head. Then with a huff she whirled around to talk to Padma.

Unfortunately he only made it from the entrance hall up the stairs and halfway down the big curvy corridor before he heard a young boy's voice cry out. As he rounded the curve he almost crashed into a group of six first-year Hufflepuffs...

...who were huddled together, looking scared like they wanted to do something but couldn't figure out what to do. Everyone was looking at the group of five older Slytherins who stood hemming in another young boy.

Suddenly Harry felt a pulse of _anger_.

"Excuse me!" he bellowed, much, much louder than necessary.

It might not have been necessary. People were already turning to look at him. But it certainly served to stop all the action cold.

Harry walked past the cluster of Hufflepuffs towards the Slytherins, panting.

They looked down at him with expressions that ranged from anger to amusement to delight.

_Yikes! These are much older – much BIGGER boys who can stomp me in two seconds!_

Then Dad's training kicked in. _L__ook toward scary things instead of away from them._

Harry comprehended the game. _A__nyone caught seriously stomping the Boy-Who-Lived __i__s in for a whole ___world ___of __pain, __e__specially a pack of older Slytherins __seen by__ seven Hufflepuffs. __I estimate the __chance __of __receiving __any permanent damage in the presence of witnesses __to be just about zero__. The only real weapon the older boys ha__ve __is my own fear. __Now's my chance to__ prove I'm not Dark._

Only then did he recognize the boy trapped in their ring...

_Oh, Neville! That settles it. Of all people, Neville! How dare they?!_

Harry stepped in next to Neville and looked up at the much older, larger and stronger boys.

"Hello," all pretended cheer in his voice, "I'm the Boy-Who-Lived."

There was a rather awkward pause. No one seemed to know where the conversation was supposed to go from there.

Harry's eyes dropped downwards and saw some books and papers scattered around the floor.

_Uh-huh. You let the boy try to pick up his things and knock them down again._ He saw red. Redder. _Easy enough for us to come pick everything up after they're put to flight. I just have to keep their attention away from the books._

Unfortunately his straying eyes had been noted. "Ooh," said the largest boy, "did 'oo want the widdle books – "

"Shut up," Harry jabbed. __Keep them off balance. Don't do what they expect. Don't fall into a pattern that calls for them to bully you. __"Is this part of some incredibly clever plan that will gain you future advantage, or is it as pointless a disgrace to the name of Salazar Slytherin as it – "

The largest boy shoved Harry hard and down he went, sprawling out of their circle onto the hard stone floor of Hogwarts with a sad little gasp.

The Slytherins laughed.

Neville was kneeling beside him. "Are you okay, Harry?" He offered Harry his hand.

Harry ignored him and rose up in what seemed to him like terribly slow motion, a snarl on his face. _I__ d__o__n't __even __know how to use __my__ wand, but __I see __no reason to let that stop __me__._

Harry lifted his right hand to snap his fingers. "Abracadabra," he said, and snapped.

At the word __Abracadabra__ Neville and another Hufflepuff screamed. Two Slytherins made desperate leaps out of the line of fire and the largest Slytherin staggered back with an expression of shock.

_What was that?_

The largest boy, whipping out his wand, roared "Stupefy!" and a bright red, angry looking spell whizzed past Harry's ear and struck the boy behind him in the arm, who promptly keeled over.

It probably wasn't the best time in the world for one of the Hufflepuffs to start laughing, but that was exactly what one of the Hufflepuffs was doing.

"You," growled the largest Slytherin, "you are going to – "

"Look at that!" shouted Harry. "I mean, just __look __at him! How likely is it you'd hit a Slytherin with that spell? After I update my priors based on that data, I can only come to one conclusion... Thank _goodness_ you're not a Storm Trooper."

There was another one of those awkward pauses.

Harry stepped back and shot the Slytherin his best lethal glare. "Now go away or I will just keep making your existence more and more surreal until you do. You don't mess with Potter, or your life gets a little __hairy. __Get it? Ha!"

In one switft, terrible motion the largest Slytherin swung a massive fist at Harry's head. But it whiffed off Harry's shoulder. The bully overbalanced and went down on one knee.

"Look," Harry said, rubbing his shoulder, "you want to call it a day? I think things are spiraling out of control here. How about you go back to Slytherin and I go back to Ravenclaw and we grab a cold drink, okay?"

"I've got a better idea," rumbled the Slytherin, leaping up with surprising agility. "How about if you accidentally break all your fingers?"

"How do you plan to stage a believable accident after making the threat in front of a dozen witnesses, you __idiot – __"

The largest Slytherin slowly, deliberately reached out towards Harry's hands, and Harry froze.

_He is__ enormously strong. I should n__o__t have called him an idiot. __THIS IS GOING TO HURT!_

"Wait!" said the one remaining upright Slytherin, his voice now tight from panic. "Stop, it's not worth it! It's only the first day!"

The largest Slytherin ignored him, gripping Harry's right hand in the vice of his left hand, and wrenched Harry's index finger with his right hand.

Harry stared straight into his eyes. Though his mind was screaming, _I'm going to lose my fingers!_, his eyes were as icy as the arctic steel of a nightmare.

Slowly, the Slytherin bent his index finger backwards.

__He hasn't broken my finger ____yet. I____t is beneath me to so much as flinch until he does. ____T____his is just another attempt to ____create____ fear.__

Harry brought his other hand up, directly in front of the big boy's face, and snapped his fingers, but nothing happened.

"Stop!" said the Slytherin who had objected before. "Stop, this is a very bad idea!"

"I rather agree," said an older voice. A woman's voice.

The largest Slytherin dropped Harry and sprung back.

"Professor Sprout!" cried one of the Hufflepuffs.

Harry saw his favourite dumpy little woman stalking toward them with messy curly gray hair and clothes covered with dirt. She had the face of a thunderhead and her finger trembled as she levelled it at the Slytherins. "Explain yourselves," she said. "What are you doing with my Hufflepuffs and..." she looked at him. "My fine student, Harry Potter."

"He threatened to kill us!" blurted the other Slytherin, the one who'd called for a halt.

"What?" Harry's mind was blank. "I did not! If I was going to kill you I wouldn't make public threats first!"

A Slytherin on the ground laughed helplessly and then stopped abruptly as the other boys shot him glares.

Professor Sprout had adopted a rather sceptical expression. "What death threat would this be, exactly?"

"The Killing Curse! He pretended to use the Killing Curse on us!"

Professor Sprout turned to look at Harry. "Yes, quite a terrible threat from an 11-year-old boy. Though still not something you should ever dream of pretending, Harry Potter."

"I don't even know the words to the Killing Curse," Harry blurted out. "And I didn't have my wand out at any time."

Now Professor Sprout was giving Harry a sceptical look. "I suppose this boy stunned __himself__, then?"

"He __didn't __use his wand!" blurted Wayne of Hufflepuff. "I don't know how he did it, he just snapped his fingers and everybody fell down!"

"Really," said Professor Sprout after a pause. She drew her own wand. "I'm not demanding you to, since you do seem to be the victim here, but would you mind if I checked your wand to verify that?"

Harry took out his wand. "What do I – "

"Prior Incantato," said Sprout. She frowned. "That's odd, your wand doesn't seem to have been used at all."

Harry shrugged. "It hasn't, actually, I only got my wand and schoolbooks a few days ago."

Sprout nodded. "Then we have a clear case of accidental magic from a boy who felt threatened. And the rules plainly state that you are not to be held responsible. As for you..." she turned to the Slytherins. Her eyes dropped deliberately to Neville's books lying on the floor.

There was a long silence during which she looked at the five Slytherins.

"Three points from Slytherin, __each__," she said finally. "And detention for you," pointing to the biggest boy. "Don't you __ever __meddle with my Hufflepuffs, or my student Harry Potter. Now __beg____o____ne__ before I turn you into a plunger and put you on toilet duty for the rest of the month!"

Her jaw was still working, but the Slytherins beat a hasty retreat.

Neville went and started picking up his books. He seemed to be crying, but only a little. It might have been from delayed shock or it might have been because the other boys were helping him.

"Thank you very much, Harry Potter," Professor Sprout said to him. "Seven points to Ravenclaw, one for each Hufflepuff you helped protect. And I won't say anything more."

Harry blinked. _I was__ expect__ing__ a lecture about keeping __my__self out of trouble. __Plus __a scolding for __not __being in __Herbology__._

_Maybe __I ___should ___have __chosen House__ Hufflepuff. Sprout __i__s cool!_

Sprout was already disappearing toward the greenhouses.

"How did you do that?" hissed one of the Hufflepuff boys as soon as she was gone.

Harry smiled smugly. "I can make anything I want happen just by snapping my fingers."

_No clue – I have no clue what just happened. But never pass up an opportunity! Be prepared!_

The boy's eyes widened. "Really?!"

"No, not really." Harry looked at the floor. "But when you're telling everyone the story be sure to share it with Hermione Granger in first-year Ravenclaw – she'll tell you a hilarious story about soda pop."

"Oh, and what was all that about the Killing Curse?"

The boy gave him a strange look. "You really don't know?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking."

"The words to the Killing Curse are – " The boy swallowed. His voice dropped to a whisper; he held his hands away from his sides to make it very clear that he wasn't holding a wand, "Avada Kedavra."

__Oh. ____O____f course they are.__

_Put that on the growing list of things I'll never ever tell Dad. It's bad enough that they think I survived a fearsome Killing Curse, without admitting to Dad that the Killing Curse is... "Abracadabra."_

"I see," Harry said after a pause. "Well, that's the last time I ever say that before snapping my fingers." _It __did have___ a nice ____effect on those Slytherins, but ____now that the news is out, probably won't work again___._

"Why did you say it, if you didn't know the curse?"

"Raised by Muggles remember? Muggles think those words are a joke and that it's funny. Seriously, that's what happened. Sorry, but can you remind me of your name?"

"I'm Ernie Macmillan," said the Hufflepuff. He held out his hand, and Harry shook it. "Honoured to meet you."

Harry executed a slight bow. "Pleased to meet you, skip the honoured thing."

Then the other boys crowded round him and there was a sudden flood of introductions.

When they were done, Harry swallowed. _This __will__ be difficult._ "Um... if everyone would excuse me... I have something to say to Neville..."

All eyes turned to Neville, who took a step back, his face looking apprehensive.

"I suppose," Neville said in a tiny voice, "you're going to say I should've been braver?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that!" Harry said hastily. "Not at all. It's just, um, I need to apologise."

He exhaled and took a deep breath. "For what I did just now, when you tried to help me. You don't have to be gracious about it or anything, this isn't about me trying to look cool by apologising or your having to accept it. I have anger management issues. That's all."

There was a pause.

Neville clutched his books tighter to his chest. "How do you do it? You were so angry it was scary."

"They wouldn't have done anything really bad in front of witnesses. Their main weapon is fear. That's why they target you: they can see you're afraid. I hoped I could show you how to be less afraid, show you that the fear was worse than the actual bullying."

"You hurt me," said Neville. "I thought I was helping and you just ignored me." He paused, his lower lip trembling. "What you did hurt worse than the bullies because I thought you were my friend._"_

"Neville!" Ernie leapt to Harry's defence. "He at least stepped in between you and them."

"I'm sorry," Harry admitted, each word costing him dearly. "When he pushed me I just got really angry..."

Neville looked down and then back at him. "Okay." He thought about it. "Do you still want to be my friend?"

Harry nodded.

"I think you're going to be really cool someday," Neville said. "But right now, you're not."


	13. Chapter 13

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 13

**J.K. Rowling and Neville Longbottom know all about Harry Potter.**

––

Harry got to Charms class out of breath. The class was already seated and Flitwick stood on a chair at the front of the class. He waved both hands high in the air and said, "Welcome, young students! Welcome to your first day of classes at Hogwarts! I am Professor Filius Flitwick and I am your Head of House. I will also be teaching you interesting and useful spells in class."

"If any of you would like to practice outside of class, there are a number of sessions listed just outside the door you can join."

Harry quickly found a seat next to Hermione.

––

"Frigideiro!"

Harry dipped a finger in the glass of water on his desk. _Lukewarm!_ He was feeling very, very cheated as he struggled with the cooling charm.

"Frigideiro!" said Hermione again next to him. Her water was solid ice and there were delicate white crystals forming on the rim of her glass. She seemed to be totally intent on her own work and not at all conscious of the other students staring at her with jealous eyes.

"Oh, _very _good, Miss Granger!" squeaked Professor Flitwick. "Excellent! Stupendous!"

Harry despaired. _What is wrong with my spell?_

And then he noticed the other students.

Professor Flitwick was standing over the desk of Lisa Turpin, also Muggleborn, and quietly adjusting the way she was holding her wand.

_It looks like a__ lot of __M__uggle-raised students __are struggling._

Harry swallowed. Hermione looked quite happy, peaceful even. He swallowed again. The moment was obvious and still, he fought the impulse. Then he shrugged. "Hermione? Do you have any idea what I might be doing wrong?"

Hermione's eyes lit up. Five minutes later, Harry's water seemed noticeably cooler.

"Keep going, Harry. You can do it! Emphasize the first syllable." She wandered off, just floating, and found someone else to help.

"A point to Ravenclaw, Hermione, for helping him." Flitwick grinned from behind them.

"Professor, what's the secret? To casting charms?" He felt as if the answer were just out of reach.

"I think most of my students succeed by the end of their first year – you're doing quite well, you know. But you'd like to go faster, hmm? Hogwarts Library and Ravenclaw Tower should both have copies of _Magic For Advanced Students_ by Leroy Pumpkinsnout. See if that helps."

"Thanks!" Harry grinned.

––

As soon as they sat down to lunch, Harry peppered Hermione with questions about the first chapters of _Basic Transfiguration_. It didn't help that George slipped into the seat beside him and asked, "What do you want to do today?"

Harry looked significantly at Hermione. "I just learned some great stuff in _Herbology_, why?"

George blinked. "You went to class?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Only two minutes of it. I see that your hand is doing better, Harry."

George wiggled his eyebrows at Harry. "There's still plenty of time to come explore the castle with us. Lee reckons he found a new secret passageway."

Hermione tilted her head. "How many secret passageways are there?"

George grinned. "This is Hogwarts Castle! ... At least ... " His voice wavered. "... three that I know of. The one from Ravenclaw tower to the dungeons only works for witches though. Us wizards can go down but not up."

––

After lunch Harry and Hermione found seats together for Professor McGonagall's class. Harry secretly wished he were exploring with the Weasleys. _I have __all the __time __in the world __to __do my studies__! What I really need is a good mental map of the castle._

Professor McGonagall took a deep breath. "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," There was no trace of any levity upon the face of the stern Scottish witch. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

Her wand came down and tapped her desk, which smoothly reshaped itself into a pig. A couple of Muggleborn students gave out small yelps. The pig looked around and snorted, seeming confused. It became a desk again.

The Transfiguration Professor looked around the classroom; her eyes settled on one student.

"Mr. Potter, you only received your schoolbooks a few days ago. Have you started reading your Transfiguration textbook?"

"No, sorry professor," Harry said.

"You needn't apologise. if you were required to read ahead you would have been told to do so." McGonagall's fingers rapped the desk in front of her. "Mr. Potter, would you care to guess whether this is a desk which I Transfigured into a pig, or if it began as a pig and I briefly removed the Transfiguration? If you had read the first chapter of your textbook, you would know."

Harry's eyebrows furrowed slightly. "I'd guess it'd be easier to start with a pig, since if it started as a desk, it might not know how to stand up."

Professor McGonagall shook her head. "No fault to you, Mr. Potter, but the correct answer is that in Transfiguration you do __not __care to guess. Wrong answers will be marked with extreme severity, questions left blank will be marked with great leniency. You must learn to know what you do not know. If I ask you any question, no matter how obvious or elementary, and you answer 'I'm not sure', I will not hold it against you and anyone who laughs will lose House points. Care to guess why this rule exists, Mr. Potter?"

__I would guess it's b____ecause a single error in Transfiguration ____is ____fraught with danger? ____But she is suggesting that I not guess, so... __"No."

"Good. Transfiguration is more dangerous than Apparition, which is not taught until your sixth year. Unfortunately, you must begin learning Transfiguration at a young age. This is a _dangerous_ subject, and I will attempt to leave you quite scared of making any mistakes, because none of my students have yet been permanently injured and I will be _extremely put out _if you are the first class to __spoil my record__."

Several students gulped.

Professor McGonagall stood up and moved over to the wall behind her desk, which held a polished wooden board.

"There are many reasons why Transfiguration is dangerous, but one reason stands above all the rest." She produced a short quill with a thick end, and used it to sketch letters in red; which she then underlined, using the same marker, in blue:

TRANSFIGURATION IS NOT PERMANENT!

"Transfiguration is not permanent!" said Professor McGonagall. "Transfiguration is not permanent! Transfiguration is not permanent! Mr. Potter!"

Harry's eyes snapped back to the Professor.

"Suppose a student transfigured a block of wood into a cup of water, and you drank it. What do you imagine might happen to you when the transfiguration wore off?" There was a pause. "Excuse me, I should not have asked you, Mr. Potter. I forget that you are blessed with an unusually good imagination – "

"I'm fine," Harry said, swallowing hard. "So the first answer is that I don't know," the Professor nodded approvingly, "But I imagine there might be wood in my stomach, and in my blood, and if any of that water was absorbed into my tissues – would it be wood pulp or solid wood –?"

Harry's grasp of magic stumbled. He couldn't understand how wood mapped into water in the first place, so he couldn't understand what would happen after the water molecules were scrambled by ordinary thermal motions and the magic wore off and the mapping reversed.

McGonagall's face was stiff. "You are correct, Mr. Potter – you would become extremely sick and require immediate Flooing to St. Mungo's Hospital if you were to have any chance of survival. Please turn your textbooks to page 5."

Even without any sound in the moving picture, you could tell that the woman with discolored skin was screaming.

"The criminal who transfigured gold into wine and gave it to this woman to drink, 'in payment of the debt,' according to him – this criminal received a sentence of ten years in Azkaban."

"Please turn to page 6. That is a Dementor. They are the guardians of Azkaban. They suck away at your magic, your life and any happy thoughts you try to have. The picture on page 7 is the criminal ten years later, on his release. You will note that he is dead – yes, Mr. Potter?"

"Professor," Harry said, "if the worst happens in a case like that, is there any way of maintaining the transfiguration?"

"No," Professor McGonagall said flatly. "Sustaining a transfiguration is a constant drain on your magic which scales with the size of the target form. And you would need to recontact the target every few hours, which is, in a case like this, impossible. Disasters like this are unrecoverable!"

Professor McGonagall leaned forward, grim lines around her eyes.

"You will absolutely never under any circumstances transfigure anything into a liquid or a gas. No water. No air. Nothing like water. Nothing like air. Even if it is not meant to drink. Liquid evaporates: little bits and pieces of it get into the air." She looked around the room.

"You will not transfigure anything that is to be burned. It will make smoke and someone may breathe it in! You will not transfigure anything that could conceivably go inside anyone's body by any means. No food. Nothing that looks like food. Not even as a prank where you mean to tell them about your mud pie before they eat it. You will never do it. Period. Inside this classroom or out of it anywhere. Is that well understood by __every single student?__"

"Yes," said Harry, Hermione, and a few others. The rest seemed to be speechless.

"Is that well understood by every single student?!"

"Yes," they said or muttered or whispered.

"If you break any of these rules you will not further study transfiguration during your stay at Hogwarts. Repeat along with me: I will never transfigure anything into a liquid or gas."

"I will never transfigure anything into a liquid or gas," said the students in ragged chorus.

"Again! Louder! I will never transfigure anything into a liquid or gas."

"I will never transfigure anything into a liquid or gas."

"I will never transfigure anything that looks like food or anything else that goes inside a human body."

"I will never transfigure anything that is to be burned because it could make smoke."

"I will never transfigure anything that looks like money, including Muggle money," said Professor McGonagall. "It is a violation of our law. The penalty is that the goblin nation will attack you. No trial. The Ministry of Magic will not aid you."

"I will never transfigure anything that looks like money," repeated the students.

"And above all," said Professor McGonagall, "you will not transfigure any living subject, especially yourselves! It will make you very sick and possibly dead, depending on how you transfigure yourself and how long you maintain the change."

Professor McGonagall paused. "Mr. Potter is currently holding up his hand because he has seen an Animagus transformation – specifically a human transforming into a cat and back again. But an Animagus transformation is not free transfiguration."

Professor McGonagall took a small sphere of wood out of her pocket. She held it up and said "Crystalus!" as she tapped it with her wand, and the wood ball became a glass ball. She tapped it with her wand again and the ball became wood once more.

"_'_Crystalus' transforms a subject into glass. It cannot alter its shape, nor can it transform a desk into a pig."

"The most general form of transfiguration, free transfiguration, which you will learn here, is capable of transforming any subject into any target, at least in physical form. For this reason, free transfiguration is done wordlessly. Using charms would require different words for every different transformation between subject and target."

Professor McGonagall gave her students a sharp look. "Some schools begin with transfiguration charms and move on to free transfiguration afterwards. It is much easier in the beginning, but it can set you in a poor mold which impairs your ability later. At Hogwarts, you will learn free transfiguration from the very start, which requires that you cast the spell wordlessly, by holding the subject form, the target form and the transformation within your own mind."

"And to answer Mr. Potter's question, it is free transfiguration which you must never do to a living subject. There are charms and potions which can safely, reversibly transform living subjects in limited ways. An Animagus with a missing limb will still be missing that limb after transforming, for example. Free transfiguration is not safe. Your body will change while it is transfigured: breathing, for example, results in a constant loss of the body's stuff to the surrounding air. When the transfiguration wears off and your body tries to revert to its original form, it will not quite be able to do so. If you press your wand to your body and imagine yourself with golden hair, afterwards your hair will fall out. If you visualise yourself as someone with clearer skin, you will be taking a long stay at St. Mungo's. And if you Transfigure yourself into an adult bodily form, then, when the Transfiguration wears off, you will die!"

Harry raised his hand.

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"Is it possible to transfigure a living subject into a target that is stable, such as a steel ball?"

She shook her head. "No. Even inanimate objects undergo small changes over time. When the transfiguration wore off there would be no visible changes for the first minute. You would notice nothing wrong. But in an hour you would be sick and in a day you would be dead."

Harry gulped.

"Now repeat after me," she drilled them. "I will never try to transfigure any living subject, especially myself, unless specifically instructed to do so using a specialised charm or potion."

"If I am not sure whether a transfiguration is safe, I will not try it until I have asked Professor McGonagall or Professor Flitwick or Professor Snape or the Headmaster, who are the only recognised authorities on transfiguration at Hogwarts. Asking another student is not acceptable! Even if they say that they remember asking the same question!"

"Even if the current Defence Professor at Hogwarts tells me that a transfiguration is safe, and even if I see the Defence Professor do it and nothing bad seems to happen, I will not try it myself."

"I have the absolute right to refuse to perform any transfiguration about which I feel the slightest bit nervous. Since not even the Headmaster of Hogwarts can order me to do otherwise, I certainly will not accept any such order from the Defence Professor, even if the Defence Professor threatens to deduct one hundred House points and have me expelled."

"If I break any of these rules I will not further study transfiguration during my time at Hogwarts."

She paused and let her eyes sweep the room. The room was completely still. Every student sat stiffly in their seat.

"We will repeat these rules at the start of every class for the first month," said Professor McGonagall. "And now, we will begin with toothpicks as subjects and needles as targets. Put away your wands, thank you, by 'begin' I meant that you will begin taking notes."

When there were only ten minutes remaining, Professor McGonagall handed out toothpicks.

_I'm doomed,_ was the exact phrase that shot through Harry's mind.

Five minutes later, Hermione had a silvery-looking toothpick.

The entire rest of the class, Muggleborn or otherwise, had exactly what they'd started with.

"Excellent, Hermione. One point to Ravenclaw. Well, I suppose that is all for today. Class dismissed." Professor McGonagall said. Harry was grinding his teeth together.

As everyone stood and began putting their books away, Harry's frustration just burst out of him. "I can't _believe_ you already know how to do transfiguration! I'm pretty sure Professor McGonagall said the subject is hard, as in sixth-year hard! You – you transfigured that – " His words failed him.

"Harry, we're all in awe of Hermione. There's no need to turn into a green-eyed monster over it!" Padma giggled.

Unfortunately, McGonagall overheard them from the other side of the room. "Mr. Potter, I did not get the chance to congratulate you on your _seven points_ this morning."

Hermione just gaped at him. "You ditched Herbology this morning, and you got points for it?"


	14. Chapter 14

Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 14

**All the rewards for Harry Potter go to J.K. Rowling.**

––

As soon as he walked into the Defence classroom, Harry knew that this subject was going to be ... different.

It was, for a start, the largest classroom he had yet seen at Hogwarts. It felt like a major university classroom, with layered tiers of desks facing a gigantic flat stage of white marble. It was on the fifth floor and Harry knew that was as much explanation as he'd get for where a room like this was supposed to fit. It was becoming clear that Hogwarts simply did not have a geometry, Euclidean or otherwise; it had connections, not directions.

Unlike a university hall, there weren't rows of folding seats. Instead there were quite ordinary Hogwarts wooden desks and wooden chairs, lined up in a curve across each level of the classroom, except each desk had a rectangular, mysterious object propped up on it.

In the center of the gigantic platform, on a small raised dais of darker marble, Quirrell sat slumped over at a lone desk, head lolled back, drooling slightly over his robes.

Since Transfiguration had ended a few minutes early Harry and Hermione were the first students there. Quirrell didn't seem to be... functional at the moment and Harry didn't particularly feel like approaching Quirrell anyway.

Hermione sat down as soon as they came in but Harry wanted a desk halfway up the room. He shrugged, climbed to his chosen seat, sat and retrieved his Defence textbook. He started skimming.

Soon there were sounds as the classroom began to fill up. Harry ignored them.

"Potter? What are __you __doing here?"

_I know t__hat voice!_ Harry looked up. "Draco? What are you doing – You have minions?!"

One of the lads standing behind Draco seemed to have rather a lot of muscle for an eleven-year-old and the other was poised in a suspiciously balanced stance.

The white-blonde-haired boy smiled rather smugly and gestured behind him. "Potter, may I introduce Mr. Crabbe," his hand moved from Muscles to Balance, "Mr. Goyle. Vincent, Gregory, this is Harry Potter."

Mr. Goyle (Balance) tilted his head and gave Harry a look that was probably supposed to mean something but ended up just looking squinty. Mr. Crabbe (Muscles) said "Please to meetcha" in a tone that sounded like he was trying to lower his voice as far as it could go.

A fleeting expression of consternation crossed Draco's face, but was quickly replaced by his superior grin.

"You have minions!" Harry bantered. "Where do I get minions?"

Draco's smirk grew wider. "I'm afraid, Potter, that the first step is to be Sorted into Slytherin – "

"What? That's not fair!"

"– and then for your families to have an arrangement from before you were born."

Harry looked at Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle. They both seemed to be trying very hard to loom. That is, they were leaning forwards, hunching over their shoulders, sticking their necks out and staring at him.

"Um... hold on," said Harry. "This was arranged years ago?"

"Exactly, Potter. I'm afraid you're out of luck."

Mr. Goyle produced a toothpick and began cleaning his teeth, still looming.

"And," Harry went on, "Lucius insisted that you were not to grow up knowing your bodyguards? That you were only to meet them on your first day of school?"

That wiped the grin from Draco's face. "Yes, Potter, we all know you're brilliant. The whole school knows by now. You can stop showing off – "

"So they've been told their __whole lives __that they're going to be your minions and they've spent years imagining what minions are supposed to be like – "

Draco winced.

" – what's worse, they do know each other and they've been practising – "

"The boss told ya to shut it," rumbled Mr. Crabbe. Mr. Goyle bit down on his toothpick, holding it between his teeth, and used one hand to crack the knuckles on the other.

"I told you not to do this in front of Harry Potter!" Draco grimaced.

The two looked a bit sheepish and Mr. Goyle quickly put the toothpick back in a pocket of his robes.

But the moment Draco turned away from them to face Harry again, they went back to looming.

"I apologise," Draco ground his teeth, "for the insult which these imbeciles have offered you."

Harry gave a meaningful look to Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle. "Sounds a little harsh, Draco. _I_ think they're acting exactly the way I'd want my minions to act. I mean, if I had any minions."

Draco's jaw dropped.

"Hey, Gregory, you don' think he's tryna lure us away from the boss, do ya?"

"I'm sure Mr. Potter wouldn't be that foolish."

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," Harry said smoothly. "It's just something to keep in mind if your current employer seems unappreciative. Besides, it never hurts to have other offers while you're negotiating your working conditions, right?"

"What's __he __doin' in Ravenclaw?"

"I can't imagine, Mr. Crabbe."

"Both of you shut up!" Draco said through gritted teeth. "That's an order!"

With a visible effort, he transferred his attention to Harry again. "Anyway, what're you doing in the Slytherin Defence class?"

Harry frowned. "Hold on." His hand went into his pouch. "Schedule." He looked over the parchment. "Defence, 2:30pm."

Draco looked exactly as puzzled as he was. They both turned to look over the rest of the auditorium, which was filling with green-trimmed robes and...

"Gryffindorks!" spat Draco. "What're they doing here?!"

"Hmm," Harry mused, "Professor Quirrell did say that he would be ignoring some of the Hogwarts teaching conventions. Maybe he just combined all his classes."

"Huh, you're the first Ravenclaw in here." Draco noted.

"Yup. Got here early."

"What're you doing all the way up here, then?"

Harry blinked. "I dunno, seemed like a good place to sit?"

Draco made a scoffing sound. "You trying to get away from the teacher?" The blonde-haired boy leaned in. "Anyway, is it true about what you said to Derrick and his crew?"

"Who's Derrick?"

"You knocked him on the floor earlier?"

"Oh, him. He tripped, actually. What am I supposed to have said to him?"

"That he wasn't doing anything cunning or ambitious and he was a disgrace to Salazar Slytherin." Draco was staring intently at Harry.

"That... sounds about right," Harry shrugged. "I think it was more like, 'is this some kind of incredibly clever plot that will gain you a future advantage or is it really as much of a disgrace to the memory of Salazar Slytherin as it looks like?' Though I don't remember exactly – "

"You're confusing everyone, you know," the blonde-haired boy pointed out.

"Huh?" That caught Harry off guard.

"Warrington said that spending a long time under the Sorting Hat is one of the warning signs of a major Dark Wizard. Everyone was talking about it, wondering if they should start sucking up to you just in case. Then you went and protected a bunch of Hufflepuffs, for Merlin's sake. __Then __you told Derrick he's a disgrace to Salazar Slytherin's memory! What's anyone supposed to think?!"

"That the Sorting Hat decided to put me in the House of 'Slytherin! Just kidding! Ravenclaw!' and I've been acting accordingly."

Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle both giggled. Then Mr. Goyle clapped a hand to his mouth.

"We'd better go get our seats," Draco's voice was airy. He hesitated, straightened a bit and spoke with formal, clipped tones. "But I do want to continue our conversation from Platform 9¾ and I accept your conditions."

Harry nodded. "How about Thursday at 8pm?"

Draco's eyes narrowed. "That's pretty specific." He inclined his head as a gesture of respect. "But I agree. Meet me in front of the Slytherin common room. And I won't bother you 'til then." He wandered off with an air of blissful unconcern, tailed by his minions.

_I really could use some help with all that I'm juggling right now._ He reflected on Draco's minions. _Why did seeing his minions make me jealous? Is that my dark side?_

All four Houses streamed into the classroom now: green, red, yellow and blue, eyeing each other suspiciously. Draco and crew attempted to acquire three contiguous front-row seats – already occupied, of course. Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle loomed, but it didn't seem to have much effect.

Harry bent over his Defence textbook and continued skimming, deep in thought.

––

At 2:35pm, when most of the seats were taken and no one else seemed to be coming in, Professor Quirrell gave a sudden jerk in his chair, sat up straight and his face appeared on all the rectangular objects on the students' desks.

Harry was taken by surprise, both by the sudden appearance of Professor Quirrell's face and by the resemblance to Muggle television. There was something both nostalgic and sad about it. _I__t seem__s__ so much like home, yet it __i__sn't really, __is it?_

"Good afternoon, my young apprentices," Professor Quirrell's voice seemed to speak to Harry straight out of the desk screen. "Welcome to your first lesson in Battle Magic, as the founders of Hogwarts would have put it; or, as it happens to be called in the late twentieth century, Defence Against the Dark Arts."

There was a certain amount of frantic scrabbling as students, taken by surprise, reached for their parchment or notebooks.

"No," the Professor's voice cut in. "Don't bother writing down what this subject was once called. No such pointless question will count toward your marks in any of my lessons. That is a promise."

Many students sat straight up at that, looking rather shocked.

He wore a thin smile. "Those of you who have wasted time by reading your useless first-year Defence textbooks – "

Someone made a choking sound. Harry wondered if it was Hermione.

"– may have gotten the impression that although this subject is called Defence Against the Dark Arts, it is actually about how to defend against Nightmare Butterflies, which cause mildly bad dreams. Or Acid Slugs, which can dissolve all the way through a two-inch wooden beam given most of a day..."

Professor Quirrell stood up, shoving his chair back from the desk. The screen on Harry's desk followed his every move. He strode towards the front of the classroom and bellowed:

"The Hungarian Horntail is taller than a dozen men! It breathes fire so quickly and so accurately that it can melt a Snitch in midflight! One Killing Curse will bring it down!"

There were gasps from the students.

"The Mountain Troll is more dangerous than the Hungarian Horntail! It is strong enough to bite through steel! Its hide is resistant enough to withstand Stunning Hexes and Cutting Charms! Its sense of smell is so acute that it can tell from afar whether its prey is part of a pack or alone and vulnerable! Most fearsome of all, the troll is unique among magical creatures in continuously maintaining a form of Transfiguration on itself: it is always transforming into its own body."

"If you somehow succeed in ripping off its arm it will grow another within seconds! Fire and acid will scar it, temporarily confusing its regenerative powers... for an hour or two! They are smart enough to use clubs! The mountain troll is the third most perfect killing machine in all Nature! One Killing Curse will bring it down."

The silent students wore looks of shock and dismay.

Professor Quirrell now appeared grim, though he still smiled. "Your sad excuse for a first-year Defence textbook will suggest to you that you expose the mountain troll to sunlight, which will freeze it in place. This, my young apprentices, is the sort of useless knowledge you will never find in my lessons. You do not encounter mountain trolls in open daylight! The idea that you should use sunlight to stop them is the result of foolish textbook authors trying to show off their mastery of minutia at the expense of practicality. Just because there is a ridiculously obscure way of dealing with mountain trolls does not mean you should actually try to use it! The Killing Curse is unblockable, unstoppable and works every single time on anything with a brain. If, as an adult wizard, you find yourself incapable of using the Killing Curse, then you can simply Apparate away! Likewise if you are facing the second most perfect killing machine, a Dementor, you just ... Apparate away ... " His voice trailed off.

Then, speaking lower... harder... "Unless, of course, you are under the influence of an anti-Apparition jinx. No, there is exactly one monster which can threaten you once you are fully grown, the single most dangerous monster in all the world, so dangerous that nothing else comes close." He paused for effect.

"The Dark Wizard. That is the only thing that will still be able to threaten you."

His lips set in a thin line. "I will reluctantly teach you enough trivia for a passing mark on the Ministry-mandated portions of your first-year finals. Since your exact mark on these sections will make no difference to your future life, anyone who wants more than a passing mark is welcome to waste their own time studying our pathetic excuse for a textbook. The title of this subject is not Defence Against Minor Pests! You are here to learn how to defend yourselves against the Dark Arts! Which means, let us be very clear on this, defending yourselves against Dark Wizards. People with wands who want to hurt you and who will likely succeed in doing so unless you hurt them first! There is no defence without offence! There is no defence without fighting! This reality is deemed too harsh for eleven-year-olds by the fat, overpaid, Auror-guarded politicians who mandated your curriculum." His voice swelled to fill the enormous room. "To the abyss with those fools! You are here for the subject that has been taught at Hogwarts for eight hundred years! Welcome to your first year of Battle Magic!"

Harry started applauding. He couldn't help himself. It was too inspiring. Once Harry started clapping there was some scattered response from Gryffindor and more from Slytherin, but most students simply seemed too stunned to react.

Professor Quirrell made a cutting gesture, halting the applause in an instant. "Thank you very much. Now to practicalities. I have combined all my first-year Battle classes into one, which allows me to offer you twice as much classroom time as Doubles sessions – "

That got a reaction: gasps of horror.

"– an increased load which I will make up to you by not assigning any homework."

The gasps cut off.

"Yes, you heard me correctly. I will teach you to fight! Not to write twelve inches on fighting due Monday!"

Harry wished he'd sat next to Hermione so he could watch the expressions on her face.

"For those of you so inclined, I have arranged some after-school activities that I think you will find quite interesting as well as educational. Do you want to show the world your __own __abilities instead of watching fourteen other people play Quidditch? More than seven people can fight in an army."

"After-school activities will also earn you Quirrell points. What are Quirrell points, you ask? The House point system does not suit my needs, because it makes House points too rare. I prefer to let my students know how they are doing more frequently than that. And on the rare occasions I offer you a written test, it will mark itself as you go along, and if you get too many related questions wrong, your test will show the names of students who got those questions right and those students will be able to earn Quirrell points by helping you."

_Wow! Why don't the other professors use a system like that?_

"What good are Quirrell points, you wonder? For a start, ten Quirrell points will be worth one House point. But they will earn you other favors as well. Would you like to take your exam at an unusual time? Is there a particular session you would very much prefer to skip? You will find that I can be very flexible on behalf of students who have accumulated enough Quirrell points. Quirrell points will matter when I select the generals of the armies. And just before the Christmas break I will grant someone a wish. Any school-related feat that lies within my power, my influence or above all, my ingenuity. Yes, I was in Slytherin and I am offering to formulate a cunning plot on your behalf, if that is what it takes to accomplish your desire. This wish will go to whoever has earned the most Quirrell points within all seven years."

_That would be me_, Harry decided that instant.

"Now leave your books and loose items at your desks. They will be safe: the screens will watch over them for you. Come down onto this platform. It's time to play a game called 'Who's the Most Dangerous Student in the Classroom.'"


End file.
